


Stitches Over Our Eyes

by Lithal



Category: Haikyuu!!, Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Blood and Gore, Character Death, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Monsters, Past Character Death, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-02-22 11:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 42,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13165545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lithal/pseuds/Lithal
Summary: A series of earthquakes resulted in release of a virus that turns humans into monsters. Now the town is barricaded, and the inhabitants must battle for survival, and for the truth.Each chapter will incorporate words from a word game.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [our_flame_never_goes_out](https://archiveofourown.org/users/our_flame_never_goes_out/gifts).



> A big thank you to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my lovely beta!
> 
> Title of the fic inspired by a line from The Apocalypse Song from St. Vincent's album, Marry Me.

The streets were deserted and almost completely dark, with only the occasional street lamp providing some modicum of light. The lack of light did not matter to most people, who were holed up in safe places for the night, which was in fact the smartest thing to do. For the few people still wandering out on the streets, perhaps in desperation, perhaps in despair, that little bit of light could be the difference between life and death. One such person was Midorima, a young man clad in black, heading towards his destination: a small, secluded apartment that reportedly hadn’t been ransacked yet. He was skeptical, but Takao needed medicine, which they didn’t have any of, and food, of which they were running dangerously low. He was willing to take the risk, and just hoped that their new safe place would be good enough to keep Takao safe from harm until he got back. They were the only people left of their original group of five, and he was going to do everything he could to not end up alone.

Midorima kept a steady pace, keeping to the shadows and alert for any sounds or movements that could indicate the presence of other desperate people like himself, or of something more sinister. If there were any monsters around and they decided to attack him, he would not fare very well, but he liked to believe he was at least prepared. By staying to the shadows, he would be inconspicuous, and he had a loaded shotgun they’d been lucky enough to find on the way to their current safe spot. Hopefully it would buy him time if he got attacked.

Arriving at the location, he stopped, crouched low at the corner of the alley, and squinted up at the dark building. The windows were cracked and missing panes of glass, and he didn’t trust the fire escape to provide him with a silent route up into the apartment. He was trying to figure out whether the dark and narrow opening in the building was a staircase or a tunnel when a scuffling sound startled him. Heart pounding, he crouched lower and looked around, scanning the area for the source of the sound. He caught a movement in the corner of his eye, and quickly turned, shotgun ready, to find himself pointing a gun at a black cat. The cat didn’t react to the gun—perhaps it was used to violence by now—and stared at him with its glowing golden eyes. Cat and man stared at each other for a while, before the cat decided that he was not a threat and turned away with a meow and a swish of its tail.

Midorima took a deep breath to calm his racing heart and silently cursed himself. He scanned the area again and then edged forward towards the building. To his relief, the narrow area did turn out to be a staircase leading up to the apartment. Gun ready, he slowly crept up the stairs, being very careful with his feet lest he step on something that could give away his location and draw attention.

The narrow hallway was deserted, and he inched towards the door to the apartment. Slowly, carefully, he pushed the door open, marveling at his luck when it didn’t creak. Perhaps if he still had access to Oha Asa, he would’ve found that today was a good day for Cancers. He prayed Scorpios were ranked just as high—no, higher. Quietly, Midorima entered the apartment, listening intently for any indication of life. Once he was convinced that he was alone, he pulled out a small flashlight, quickly scanned the room and headed to the kitchen.

Once in the kitchen, he transferred the flashlight to his mouth, and pulled open the cabinets at the farthest end, relieved to see that they seemed to be untouched. Midorima quickly and efficiently made his way through the cabinets, collecting pasta, canned fruit, tea, crackers, some sharp knives, and a box of granola bars. He pulled open the last cabinet, and froze. It looked like some things were missing from it, and others had been put haphazardly back. This meant someone had been—or still was—in the apartment. Quickly grabbing a large tin of pork jowl, he zipped his rucksack.

He registered a sound from behind him, but before he could react, he found himself painfully pinned to the ground, a weight on his back, his gun gone. He was about to struggle when he felt a knife press into his neck. “Don’t even think of attacking,” a voice hissed above him. “I will _not_ hesitate to shred you if it comes down to it.”

Midorima grunted in response, afraid to give his assailant a reason to use the knife. He was trying to plan an escape when another voice cut through. “ _Midorimacchi?_ Let him go, Oikawa.” The knife at his neck disappeared, and the weight on his back shifted but did not leave.

“Are you sure, Kitsun?” Oikawa said sharply. “How do you know he’s not going to attack us?”

“You can keep the gun trained on him if you want,” the other man said.

Oikawa hummed and finally removed himself. Midorima quickly got up, shaking out the arm that Oikawa had pinned behind him, and faced his attackers, shining the flashlight at them. Oikawa was slender, with messy brown hair and sharp brown eyes. He had a gun trained on him, a smile devoid of any humour stretched across his face. Midorima spared him a few seconds and then looked at the other man. He hadn’t seen him since his life had turned into a living nightmare, but he would recognize that face anywhere. His hair had grown longer, dark roots showing, and there were small cuts and scrapes on his face and neck. But despite all this, Kise Ryouta managed to look like he had walked out of an ad for an apocalypse-themed fashion line. 

“Hello, Midorimacchi. Long time no see,” Kise said, with a wry smile.

“Kise,” said Midorima, picking up his backpack and swinging it onto his shoulder. “Can I have my gun back?” he asked Oikawa, whose smile just got larger. Midorima didn’t like it. It rang of cruelty and a promise of pain. 

“I don’t think so, Mido-chan,” he replied sweetly. “Kitsun might trust you not to kill us, but I don’t.”

Midorima looked back at Kise, who let out a tired sigh that was so unlike him. “What brings you here, Midorimachhi?” he asked.

“The same thing that brought you here, I expect,” Midorima replied.

“Yes, so hand your backpack over, and go back to your hiding place,” Oikawa said. “And maybe I won’t waste a bullet on you.” When Midorima made no move to comply, Oikawa cocked his head and raised the gun to Midorima’s chest. 

“ _Oikawa,_ ” Kise said, his own voice sharp. 

“ _I don’t care if this guy is a friend or an ex or whatever. I will not let you get between these supplies, Iwa-chan, and Kuroo, you hear me?”_ Oikawa said, his voice icy and all traces of his smile gone.

“I’m sorry, but I have someone who needs them too,” Midorima said, aiming a gun of his own at Oikawa, whose momentary distraction had allowed Midorima to pull it out of his waistband. It had dug into his abdomen painfully when he was pinned to the ground, but he was glad Takao had made him bring it with him as a precautaion, just in case he ran out of bullets in his first one, or lost it as he had.

“It looks like we’re at an impasse,” Kise said, not making any move to help either of them. “Takao?” he asked Midorima, and sighed when he nodded in reply. “So, here’s what we’ll do: we take all the supplies we can gather to our hiding place— _just listen—_ and you bring Takao there too. We’ll share them.”

Oikawa frowned unhappily at Kise, but Midorima found that he didn’t really care, as long as he got to bring Takao what he needed. “You two come with me to bring Takao then,” he said.

Oikawa looked like he was about to say something but Kise cut in. “Is there anyone else with you scouting for supplies? Is there anyone with Takao? I’m assuming he’s injured,” he said.

“It’s just the two of us,” Midorima replied.

“Okay. We’ll go with you and bring you both to our safe spot,” Kise said. Seeing Oikawa open his mouth, he added, “You’d want someone else to help too, if it was just you and Iwaizumi. We have two other people looking for supplies, _and_ a person keeping an eye on the injured. Midorimacchi doesn’t.” Pursing his lips, Oikawa nodded, and lowered his gun. Shooting Midorima a cold look, he gestured for him to move. Kise and Midorima gathered the supplies while Oikawa kept watch, and the trio then exited the apartment.

Luckily, they didn’t run into any trouble on the way to the hideout. Midorima hurried to where he had left Takao, and was greeted with a gun barrel pointing at his face. He froze for a moment before Takao let out a pained breath and lowered the gun.

“Shin-chan,” he said with a grimace, and dropped back down to the floor. He noticed Oikawa behind Midorima and visibly tensed again. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“An ally,” Midorima said, quickly dropping down beside him. “Ran into him and Kise at the apartment; we’re going to join them at their hideout,” he explained, quickly checking on Takao’s leg to ensure that his makeshift bandage was holding up. He handed Takao some painkillers he had been lucky enough to find at the apartment, and then picked him up. The fact that Takao didn’t try to crack a joke about the situation worried him. “Let’s go,” he told Oikawa shortly, and the two headed out again, where Kise was waiting.

Kise led the way this time, Midorima following, and Oikawa bringing up the rear. When they reached the farther end of the street, Kise abruptly stopped and motioned the others to stay hidden. He quickly signed something which prompted Oikawa to cock his pistol. Kise pulled out a wicked looking knife and jerked his head. Oikawa tugged at Midorima’s shirt to let him know that they were backing into the alley behind them. As they crept into the alley, Midorima caught a glimpse of a dark shape that looked like a disproportionate human some distance away from them and his heart chilled. It was a monster, and it wouldn’t be long before it smelled them, particularly with Takao’s wound still slowly seeping blood. They had just crouched into the shadows when there was an explosion behind them. Midorima barely turned in time to watch Oikawa shoot the monster in the chest, knocking it off course. It bought them precious time.

“Run!” Kise said urgently. “Before more of them show up and trap us here.” Midorima ran after Kise, weighed down by Takao. The monster out on the street had heard the commotion too, and was now heading towards them. Midorima heard growls from behind him as he followed Kise. The monster in the alley was giving chase too.

“ _SHIT! Isn’t Kenma supposed to be guarding this place?”_ he heard Oikawa snap as another shot rang out behind him. Another shot quickly followed. Midorima risked a glance behind him, and saw that there were three monsters behind them now. He ran faster.

The monster in the front lunged at Kise, who had shed his backpack. Kise dove sideways and brought the knife up to slash at the monster’s foot, eliciting a howl from it as it crumpled. Kise quickly rolled away and got to his feet. Grabbing his backpack, he swung it with all his force and brought it down onto the monster’s head. There was a sickening crunch, and Midorima unconsciously backed away a step. With barely a glance at Midorima, Kise turned around and ran to help Oikawa, who had managed to immobilize one monster and was busy avoiding being mauled by the other two.

“Back!” a calm voice came from a window above them. Oikawa reacted to the command almost on instinct, and a large glass bottle flew out of the window, hitting one of the monsters. The monster’s flesh started smoking at places as it writhed in agony. Another bottle flew out and hit the second monster, causing a similar reaction. “Move,” the voice said, prompting them to start moving again. Midorima tried to block out the agonized howls of the monsters in the background by bringing his attention to Takao, who had passed out soon after they had left the hideout. He hoped it was not because of blood loss.

When they finally stopped, they were standing in front of a very run-down building squeezed between two much nicer-looking buildings. They headed inside, and Midorima realized it was an inn of some sort. Kise showed Midorima to a room with a bed, on which he gently laid out Takao and set about properly binding his leg. Kise closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall, watching Midorima.

“Never took you for the caring kind, Midorimacchi,” Kise said after Midorima was done. Midorima sat on the edge of the bed and regarded him. Kise raised his eyebrows and smiled, a mere shadow of the smile Midorima remembered. “See something you like?” he asked, and Midorima thought he heard a hint of bitterness in Kise’s tone. But his tone was normal when he spoke again, and Midorima decided he must have imagined the bitterness. “How did he end up with that wound?” Kise asked, sliding down to sit on the floor.

“We started out as a group of six. By four months we were down to three. The three of us were running from a particularly large monster, when the third guy tried to save himself by shoving Takao into the monster’s reach. The monster got to his leg before I managed to pull him away,” Midorima told Kise.

“What happened to the other guy?” Kise asked. Midorima shrugged. Midorima had told the guy to get lost in no uncertain terms as soon as they had escaped from the monster. 

Kise cocked his head and regarded him silently. There was a knock at the door. “Come on downstairs, Kise. Oikawa is ready to throw a fit.” It was the person who had saved them from the monsters. Kise sighed and got up.

“Come on, Midorimacchi. Let’s introduce you to the group,” he said with false cheer. He opened the door and revealed their mysterious helper. It was a young man about their age, wearing a red hoodie at least one size too large for him. He stared at Midorima with large, almost-feline eyes, sizing him up. “Midorimacchi, this is Kenma, our resident strategist.” Midorima noticed that Kenma frowned at the title but didn’t say anything. They headed downstairs to the common room, where a small group of people was gathered. Oikawa walked up and held out his hand. When Midorima stared at him blankly, he snapped, “The supplies!” Midorima handed it over with feigned reluctance. He had already kept a few things for himself and Takao, and he was grateful that Kise didn’t mention that to Oikawa. Midorima wondered how else his old teammate, rival—no, friend—had changed, and felt a strange sadness in his chest.

“Everyone, this is Midorima,” Kise finally said. “Midorimacchi, this is our little crew. Kuroo,” he indicated a man with messy dark hair, sharp smile, and a shirt that said “Si,” who Kenma went and sat beside. “And Iwaizumi,” he indicated a heavily bandaged man with short hair and knitted eyebrows. He reminded Midorima of Kise’s high school basketball team captain. Midorima frowned. 

“Mido-chin?” a shockingly familiar voice said, prompting Midorima to turn around. He found himself looking at a giant of a man regarding him lazily, a child carrying a toy reindeer with a broken antler in his arms.

“ _Murasakibara?_ ” Midorima exclaimed.

“You two know each other?” Kuroo asked, looking on in interest.

“We went to middle school together,” Midorima answered. Murasakibara nodded in agreement and set the child down, who toddled to Kise with a cry of “Pa!” and held out its arms. To Midorima’s immense surprise, Kise, who had despised children and avoided his own nephew and niece as much as possible, bent down and picked the child up.

“Muro-chin and Kagami aren’t back yet,” Murasakibara said, glaring at Kise as if it was his fault.

“They should be back soon,” Iwaizumi said with a frown. “They’ve been gone long enough.”

“I told you we shouldn’t let them go together,” Murasakibara said, upending one of the backpacks they had brought and starting to sort through it. “They’re probably trying to play defenders of justice or something.” Although he sounded more petulant than anything else, Midorima could detect a hint of worry behind the complaint. Murasakibara, it seemed, had changed too, even if the change wasn’t as drastic as Kise’s.

“Kagami and Himuro are here too?” Midorima asked, looking between Murasakibara and Kise. “What about Kuroko?”

“Kurokocchi was with Kagamicchi when we found them, but he got separated from us during our move to this place. We’ve been keeping our eyes and ears open, but there hasn’t been any news of him yet,” Kise replied. “He’s probably trying to look for him as we speak,” he added with a shrug. He walked past an expensive-looking teak table and joined Kuroo and Kenma on the couch, setting the child on his lap. Midorima wanted to ask about the child, but he felt like now was not the right moment. He decided to go back upstairs to check on Takao and to meditate for a while, which was a tradition he and Takao had started in their last year of high school, as a way to maintain their sanity while juggling schoolwork, cram school, and the basketball team. Whether it helped balance their qis was up for debate, but it did keep them calm, so they had continued doing it after high school, and even during the apocalypse. 

After a final look at Takao to ensure that he was breathing normally, Midorima decided to head back downstairs and ask the others some more questions about their situation. Oikawa, Iwaizumi, Murasakibara, and the child were no longer in the room. Kise had moved to a different couch and was writing something down in a small notebook. Kenma was curled up against Kuroo on the couch and they seemed to be having a quiet conversation.

Kise looked up at him when he entered the room, and gestured to a seat beside him. “Midorimacchi,” he said, tapping the notebook on his thigh. “I was taking inventory,” he continued. “We got some more food today, which should last us some time if we ration properly, but we need to get something more suitable for Mai-chan—the baby.” He handed the notebook over to Midorima, who flipped it open to a page full of notes regarding chemical reactions in cramped but neat handwriting. There were diagrams of neurons in the margins, complete with labelled dendrons and exons. He looked curiously at Kise, who chuckled lightly and pointed at the two young men on the couch. “Kuroo’s notes on potential weapons and how to best use them. He minored in neuroscience, so he tends to doodle brain cells when he’s thinking.”

“Found the neurons?” Kuroo asked with a grin. “Helps me concentrate,” he explained. “That reminds me, there’s some antiseptic in our supplies if you need it to clean your friend’s wounds,” he added. Before Midorima could say anything, there was a little beep which prompted Kenma to push away from Kuroo and get up. 

“Time for my lookout shift,” he explained to Midorima.

“I can take your shift,” Midorima offered, noticing how tired he looked. Kenma nodded in thanks and sank back down onto the couch.

“Kise, you can show him where to go,” Kuroo suggested.

With a sigh, Kise stood up. “Let’s go, Midorimacchi.” 

Kise led him upstairs to the attic, which was bare save what looked like an old, weathered rug on the floor, a bag, and a few glass bottles next to the window. “Here’s where we keep watch. Not the widest view, or the best spot, but it lets us chuck concentrated acid on potential intruders. That’s what those bottles are for, by the way. Don’t try to drink it. And only use in an emergency. This is all we have left, so Kuroo won’t be happy if you use it on something benign.”

Midorima nodded and sat on the rug, watching the street through the window. Kise quietly headed back downstairs. To keep his thoughts from spiralling into despair, Midorima began whispering the Greek alphabet under his breath. He had gotten as far as nu when something outside caught his eye. Squinting, he got as close to the window as possible, and saw that there were people heading towards the building. There seemed to be at least five people. One of them had someone in a chokehold with a gun held at their temple, while another man had a gun trained at him as he led them towards the building. As they passed under a streetlight, Midorima saw that Kagami was the one being held hostage, while Himuro led them to the safe house at gun point.

Midorima quickly assessed his options. Attacking them with acid was not an option. He could miss and melt Kagami or Himuro’s skin off. He had to let the others know that trouble was fast approaching. Quietly, he got up, swiftly put the bottles in the bag and headed downstairs. Kise and Murasakibara were the only ones in the common area. 

“People outside; five that I could see; they have Kagami and Himuro,” Midorima informed him succinctly. Kise nodded, lips pursed.

“I’ll get the others. Murasakibaracchi, hide Takao and Mai-chan in the cellar, then join Oikawa once Iwaizumi gets to the cellar,” he said. Murasakibara looked unhappy with the decision but headed out without complaint.

“Midorimacchi, leave the bottles here for Kuroo and Kenma. Grab a gun and a knife, then stand by the entrance we came through. I’ll join you there as soon as I alert the others.” With that, Kise hurried out. Midorima slid a knife and a gun into his belt, cocked another gun, and headed quietly to the door.

“How do I know you’re actually going to let us go if we lead you to the safe house?” he heard Himuro say fairly loudly. A thud and some fierce whispers followed. Based on the sounds, Midorima guessed that they were getting very close to the entrance.

He felt a light tap on his shoulder as Kise appeared and took the other side of the door. He signaled Midorima to wait. A heartbeat later, the door handle shook, and they heard Himuro say, as if through clenched teeth, “Alright, here we are. I’m going in first, like you said.”

Kise glanced at Midorima and gave an almost imperceptible nod before the door opened and Himuro stepped inside. Kise grabbed his arm and wrenched him inside while Midorima shot the man who was behind him and grabbed his gun. Everyone’s focus shifted to Kise and Midorima. At that moment, Oikawa hurled a knife at the girl bringing the rear for the gang, catching her in the chest. Murasakibara grabbed the man holding Kagami hostage, while Kuroo and Kenma emerged with their guns trained on the remaining two people.

“We’ve got the rest of the gang coming after us,” one of them sneered, seemingly unfazed at the gun pointed at her head. Her lack of fear was reasonable, since she had her own gun pointed at her opponent.

“We’ll make sure we leave your bodies where they can find them,” Kise said coldly.

The woman stared at him and then smiled, a humourless smile with too many teeth. “I remember you. You’re the asshole who killed my brother.”

“And _you’re_ the asshole who killed _my friend,_ ” Kise said, voice devoid of emotion, as he stepped behind her and slit her throat in one smooth motion. In the shocked silence that followed, Oikawa shot the other two people.

“Well, that takes care of them,” he said grimly. “I don’t think she was lying. We need to move before their gang comes after them.”

Stunned, both at the fact that he had killed someone and that he had seen Oikawa and Kise kill people so efficiently and mechanically, Midorima followed the others back inside and to the cellar, where the others were waiting.

“We have to move,” Oikawa said shortly. Iwaizumi frowned but nodded and got up.

Takao was awake, and looked like he had been keeping the toddler occupied. He put her on the ground and got up. “Are we going to look for a new safe house?” he asked.

“We’ve staked out the nearby buildings,” Kenma said, indicating himself and Kuroo. “There’s a former daycare where we can hide out for a bit.”

“There won’t be any supplies or anything there—place was pretty trashed when we found it—so we have to bring everything we can with us in one trip. I think we can stay there while we look for a better place,” Kuroo added. “I have an idea where we can go next; Kenma and I will go check it out during the day.”

He led them to the daycare, taking care to zigzag through the area to avoid getting too close to places people were hiding in. The daycare turned out to be quite close, and they reached it without any further run-ins with monsters – literal or otherwise. Kuroo had not been exaggerating when he had said the place was trashed; it looked like a minor explosion had occurred inside the building, leaving debris everywhere. 

“This place is a terrible safehouse,” Oikawa said.

“Don’t worry; there are a couple rooms deeper in that are free of sharp things on the floor. We only need it for two days anyway,” Kuroo replied, leading them to the rooms he was talking about. They were small but relatively undamaged, and were good enough to spend a couple of nights in.

“Alright then. Murasakibaracchi, I assume you want to be the one to check our two superheroes for injuries?” Kise said, looking at Himuro and Kagami. “Oikawa, put Mai-chan to bed; everyone else, get some rest. Midorimacchi and I will stand watch.”

Midorima followed Kise back to the entrance of the place, where they took positions that would allow them to most efficiently protect the place from intruders. The streets were dark, deserted, and silent.

At length, Kise spoke, “Do you ever get tired of running, Midorimacchi? It’s been our life for a year now. Run, hide, kill, watch others die.”

Midorima considered the question. “I’ve thought about it. Just giving up and not fighting when a monster attacks. But then I think of my sister, and I want to find her. So I can’t give up just yet.”

“Your sister. How do you know she’s still alive? She could have been dead for months,” Kise said.

“She was in France when all this started. The virus hasn’t spread that far yet, from what I know,” Midorima answered.

“It’s only a matter of time. Confirmed in all of Asia as of two days ago,” Kise said, staring out at the street.

“Even so, I hope that she’s safe, and that I will find her. What about you?” Midorima said, curious.

“Me? I’m only trying because of Mai-chan at this point, you know. My sisters both died in the earthquakes that started all this. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kise said tonelessly.

“I’m sorry.”

Kise hummed and they lapsed back into silence for a while. This time, it was Midorima who broke it. “Who is the baby? Is she related to you?”

Kise looked at him for a moment before replying. “No. We found her trapped under her mother’s body during an attack. Heh, I told senpai he’d die playing hero, and I was right.”

“Senpai? Kasamatsu-san?” Midorima asked.

“Yup. That’s the one. You know, Midorimacchi, that makes two people I’ve been in love with who’ll never love me back. Or maybe 'love' is too strong a word. Two people I’ve had intense feelings for, if you will.”

“Two? Who’s the other?” Midorima asked, eyebrows furrowed.

Kise smiled wryly. When Midorima was convinced he wasn’t going to get an answer, Kise sighed and replied, “It was you.”

“Oh,” Midorima said, taken aback at the unexpected answer.

“Middle school, Midorimacchi.”

“Oh,” Midorima said again. “I didn’t know.”

Kise laughed. “I know. After we entered high school I realized you’d never seemed to be interested in anyone at all. Still didn’t stop me from being a little jealous of Takao.”

“What? Takao is just a close friend,” Midorima said, surprised. “I have no romantic feelings for him, or for anyone else.”

“Fifteen-year old me didn’t know that. I’m glad you two are safe,” Kise said. Midorima recognized the end of the conversation, and they spent another few hours keeping watch in silence. The next time the silence was broken by Oikawa and Murasakibara, who came up to relieve them of guard duty.

“You two get some sleep now,” Oikawa ordered.

“Did Mai-chan give you trouble?” Kise asked, as he got up and dusted himself off.

“Kawachin sang her to sleep. It was annoying,” Mursakibara complained. “You suck at singing. _All_ your res and fas were off key. Next time she wants to hear a lullaby, I’ll do it.”

Kise and Midorima headed to sleep as the other two took their positions. When they reached the back room, Kise asked, “Why do you have that weird look on your face, Midorimacchi?”

“A series of earthquakes released a strain of virus that turns humans into monsters sounds like something straight out of a science fiction novel. But the fact that Murasakibara can sing and is apparently _willing to sing a baby to sleep_ is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta.

“No,” Murasakibara said flatly.

“We could just leave anyway, when you’re not looking,” Kagami said stubbornly, which prompted Murasakibara to turn narrowed eyes at him.

“You want me to pull out your weird-ass eyebrows again?” he snapped at him.

“Leave my eyebrows alone!” Kagami said. He was about to say more, but a glare from Himuro stopped him.

“Atsushi,” Himuro began reasonably. “We think we’re really close to finding Kuroko. Plus, we need to get more supplies; you know we’re running out. The rations we have won’t be able to feed everyone for much longer.”

Murasakibara sighed. “Murochin. I know that. I keep tabs on supplies, remember? The problem is you two going together. You’ll do something stupid and get killed.”

Kagami opened his mouth to protest, but Murasakibara interrupted him. “The last time you two went together, you were brought back to the hideout _at gunpoint._ ”

“I promise we’ll be more careful this time. You have to stay to keep an eye on Mai-chan, since Kise’s heading out today too,” Himuro said.

Murasakibara sighed. “Fine. You better not die,” he said shortly, and stalked off to the other room, where the toddler was still asleep.

“Grab the weapons, I’ll be right back,” Himuro told Kagami and went after Murasakibara. He found him sitting on the floor, going through the supplies again. Himuro had noticed that he tended to do that obsessively when he was upset.

“Go away, Murochin,” Murasakibara said, doing some quick calculations in the notebook where he kept track of the supplies.

Himuro ignored the demand. “It still amazes me how good you are at mental math.”

Murasakibara side-eyed him. “I was minoring in math, Murochin. This is very simple.” 

Himuro puffed his cheeks and let out a breath. “I’m sorry for doing this, Atsushi. We’ll be careful.” Murasakibara hummed in reply and said nothing, so he repeated, “We’ll be careful, I promise. You trust me, right?” 

“Yes,” Murasakibara said reluctantly, which Himuro counted as a win.

“Good,” Himuro said, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “We’ll be back soon.” He headed back to where Kagami was waiting for him with their guns and knives.

“Everything good?” Kagami asked, handing him a pair of knives.

“He’s still upset but we’ll be fine,” Himuro said, tucking a gun into his waistband. “Alright, let’s get going so we can get back before dark.”

The two headed out the back exit and into the alley. There were a few people out on the streets, so they made sure their weapons were out of sight. The government had been trying to maintain an order of normality, and during the day, people pretended that nothing was wrong, and pretended not to see the broken buildings and bloodstains that were a common sight these days. Repairs had fallen far down the list of priorities for the government, with the deadly virus spreading and the number of infected people rising every day. For now, the infected—the monsters—were known not to appear in the daylight, so a curfew had been implemented to keep citizens indoors after dark. Nothing was done to enforce the curfew, but whoever stayed outside after dark ran the risk of being infected or mauled to death, so most people preferred to abide by it. Some, however, had no choice, particularly if they had been jobless college students before the disaster, and remained jobless now, having to scavenge for supplies to keep themselves alive. 

“Okay, so this time we’re heading past the old elementary school, right?” Himuro asked.

Kagami nodded. “Yeah. The gang yesterday implied that there’s a new group of people in that area, and I’m hoping they know something that could help us.”

“Fingers crossed,” Himuro said. They strolled casually down the street, keeping up a light conversation. They made it to the elementary school without any problems, and continued past.

“Do you know what we’re looking for?” Kagami asked him.

“I assume it’s the high school right there?” Himuro answered dryly, pointing at the building in front of them. “I mean, there’s not much else on this side of the town. I don’t think I’m up for exploring the forest today.”

“Okay, stop. I get it. It was a stupid question. Are we just going to walk in through the front entrance?” Kagami said, then scowled. “Never mind. That would be stupid. Stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing though,” Himuro said with a smirk. “Get your gun ready,” he said, as they quietly made their way towards the back of the school. “This is a terrible idea, now that I think about it,” Himuro whispered. Anyone who happens to look out the windows will be able to see us, since we’re the only people here.”

“Should we come back at night then?” Kagami asked.

Himuro hummed, debating. “If the people inside are hostile, this could end really badly. But we’re already here? Also, coming this far at night is dangerous. Then we’d have to deal with the infected too. At least right now it would just be normal humans. Who probably have guns.”

“So neither option is that much better than the other,” Kagami commented. “Let’s keep going, then.”

Himuro shrugged, and tried to open the door. It did not budge. Letting out a curse under his breath, Himuro tried applying some force to the door, but it remained unyielding. Letting out a breath, Himuro said, “Looks like we’ll have to find another door. Let’s see if there’s one open on the other side.”

 They tried two more side doors, and found them both locked. Himuro chewed at his lip, trying to think of another way to get in. “At the very least, we know there’s someone inside the place, if all the doors are locked. They might’ve only left the entrance open, so it’s easy to guard. Or they might have locked that two. There has to be some other way in though. Did you see if any of the windows were open? If these people have only just set up base here, we can hope they haven’t successfully barred _all_ the entrances to the place.”

“Okay, I’ll go make a round of the place and look at the windows,” Kagami said. Then he scowled and pulled off his shoe, upending it. Something small and round fell out. “It’s a seed…that’s so weird,” he commented, putting his shoe back on. He returned a while later. “None of them look open, and I checked a few on the first floor, but they were all locked.”

“We could try to break a window to create an entry site, but it’s probably a lot smarter to use that particular tactic in the dark, so we get the extra cover of the night, at least,” Himuro said. “Can’t climb the vine either; looks very frail.”

Kagami let out a breath. “Let’s take another look around. If that doesn’t work, we’ll think about breaking a window.”

Himuro hummed, frowning. “You go have another look around. I’ll stick around near the door just in case someone comes out,” he said.

Kagami shrugged. “Okay. Stay sharp,” he said, and jogged off. Himuro perched in a corner where he would remain relatively hidden but would be able to see anyone entering or leaving the school. There had been no sign of life when Kagami returned from his round of the school, shaking his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “Guess we’re breaking a window.”

Himuro sighed and nodded in agreement, and the two headed towards the back of the school again. “We should probably get one of the windows farther away from the main door. And from other doors too, to be honest—hmm, this one looks like a good bet,” he said, and turned around to see Kagami lob a rather large rock at the window. The window shattered behind him as he stared wide-eyed at his brother. “You just told _everyone in there our fucking location_! Run,” he said, hurriedly retreating from the window.

But before they could escape, a bullet hit the ground in front of Himuro’s feet. They both froze. “Don’t move,” came a voice from a window on the second floor. Himuro could see the glint of a gun pointing at them. The voice then called out “Hent them!” rather loudly, and a moment later, they were surrounded by a group of people with faces covered with masks or scarves, all pointing guns at them.

“Look what we have here,” one of them said. “Should we kill them right now or should we get out some info about where we can find some goods?” he called out, presumably to the person in the window, as two of them wrenched Himuro and Kagami’s weapons from them.

“Bring them in,” came the cool reply. “We should use them first.”

“Sir, yes sir!” the man laughed, jerking his head at them. They were taken into the school, and tied unceremoniously to chairs in a classroom. Himuro ended up behind a desk that had a mutilated copy of _The 120 Days of Sodom_ under it.

“I don’t like that book; can you move me somewhere else?” he said to his captor.

“You’re staying right here, buddy,” he replied, poking him hard in the chest with his gun. “Until the boss says otherwise.”

“Ow! Alright, I was just asking. No need to get rough,” Himuro replied lightly. His captor glared at him before tightening the rope and leaving them alone.

“Great. We’re going to die in a classroom,” Kagami said glumly. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Taiga. At least you’ll die knowing that burning coal releases sulfur compounds, and that the kina is the currency of Papua New Guinea,” Himuro said with a smile. When Kagami stared at him in confusion, he rolled his eyes. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and start thinking about how we can get out of this mess, you idiot,” he said.

“Right,” said Kagami, still looking confused. Himuro rolled his eyes again and tested the jump-ropes that had been used to tie him up. They were pretty tight, and he didn’t think he could get out of them using brute strength. While the captors had tied Kagami’s legs, they hadn’t tied his, for some reason.

“I might be able to maneuver myself around because they didn’t tie my legs,” he told Kagami, and tried to push himself up to his feet. After a few tries and a terrifyingly loud screech from the legs of the chair scraping along the floor, he decided to give up for the moment. “I wonder when they’ll be back.”

“They could just shoot us the next time they come here,” Kagami pointed out. “Maybe it’s best that they don’t.”

Just as Kagami finished saying that, they heard what sounded like a gunshot. A few minutes later, they heard running in the hallway, and a few of the gang members burst into the room, advancing on the two of them. The leader waved a gun at them threateningly. “Who else came with you?” he demanded.  

“Nobody,” Himuro answered truthfully.

“Don’t lie to me, pretty boy,” the man said, locking him as his target and cocking his gun and pressing it to Himuro’s forehead. “I’m going to blow your fucking brains out if you don’t tell me the truth.”

Himuro closed his eyes. _Atsushi’s going to be so mad when he hears this,_ he thought and opened them again. “Alright, I’ll tell you. We’ve got three of our friends with us. They had already managed to get inside when you caught us,” he said, praying for the guy to believe him and remove the cold metal from his head.

More gunshots sounded in the school, and the man cursed. “You two, find whoever that is and kill them; I’ll stay here,” he ordered the others, who hastily complied. A few seconds after they had left, they heard screams and what sounded like a rifle just outside the classroom.

“What the fuck!” the man said, turning wrathful eyes on Himuro. He pulled the gun away from his forehead. Himuro barely had the time to breathe before a searing pain shot through his leg as a bullet tore through. He barely registered Kagami’s terrified yelp through the pain. “I’m going to come back to finish you off,” the guy said, heading towards the door. As soon as he opened it, his head seemed to explode, and blood sprayed across the floor. The man fell backwards, and a woman entered the room, rifle ready, a smaller woman following close behind with a handgun. 

“Don’t kill us!” Kagami squealed. The taller woman lowered the rifle and the other one hurried over and untied them, then crouched by Himuro and began working to staunch the flow of blood from his leg.

“We should tend to your wound,” she said. “Yuri, did we get them all?” she asked the other woman, who nodded. “Can you please grab the first aid kit for me?” she asked. Yuri nodded again and briskly disappeared.

“Looks like the bullet passed right through, which is good,” the woman said, talking more to herself than to either of them.

Himuro clenched his teeth in pain as she applied pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. He heard her tell him that he needed to raise his leg, and then felt Kagami help him get off the chair and lie on the ground, at which point he passed out. When he came to, he found himself lying on the floor, covered with a thin blanket, Kagami next to him.

“Tatsuya! Thank God you’re awake,” he said, letting out a deep breath.

Himuro sat up with a grimace, and looked at his leg, which was resting on a pile of what looked like gym clothes. It was bound with at least three layers of bandages, tied off with some sort of lacey cloth with what looked liked chemistry problems on it, judging by some numbers and a concluding statement saying that the reaction would produce three mol of hydrogen gas.

“You should keep the leg raised for now,” said a small woman sitting at a desk, typing away furiously on a laptop. He vaguely recalled her untying him and staunching the blood from his leg.

“Thanks for helping us,” he said, glancing at the other woman in the room, who was cleaning her gun.

The woman on the computer hummed. “Don’t thank us just yet. If Yuri thinks you’re a threat to us, she’ll finish you off. I’m Eri, by the way.”

“Thanks for now, then. And I assure you, we are no threat at all to either of you,” Himuro said evenly. “You have the guns,” he pointed out. Eri conceded the point with a quick glance in his direction.

“Here, have some water,” Kagami said, thrusting a bottle into his hands. He took it gratefully and took a long drink.

“What are you working on?” Himuro asked Eri after handing the bottle back to Kagami. She had been frowning in concentration at the screen for a moment, and was now typing again, this time more slowly.

“That’s really none of your business, is it?” she replied. Himuro shrugged. She paused, and looked up at him and Kagami. “How old are you two?”

Himuro blinked. “I’m twenty-one; he’s twenty,” he answered.

Eri exchanged a look with Yuri. “Old enough, then,” she said, looking back at them, biting her thumb as she considered something. She shook her head and went back to the computer. “Maybe later,” she said dismissively, leaving Himuro curious, and from what he could see, Kagami confused.

“We should’ve headed back a while ago. They’re going to worry,” Kagami said, not bothering to lower his voice. Himuro had to fight to stop himself from glaring at his brother.

Kagami’s comment had caught Eri’s attention. She looked up from the computer again. “‘They’? How many are you?” she asked.

“That’s none of your business, is it?” Himuro tossed her words back at her.

“We have the guns,” she retaliated with a raised eyebrow. “I do hope whoever else is with you is better than you at not getting captured,” she added.

Himuro sighed. “They have way better rep than us, considering this was the second time we got into this sort of situation.”  

“So how many are you?” Eri asked again.

Himuro hesitated. “A few,” was his non-answer.

“Fair enough,” said Eri. “We don’t trust you; you don’t trust us. It might be in all of our best interests if you do tell us, though. We need capable adults to do what we’re trying to do.”

“What’re you trying to do?” Kagami asked.

“To figure stuff out,” Eri replied. “There’s something odd going on, and we’re trying to find out what exactly it is and how we can fix it.”

“Odd how?” Himuro asked.

Eri ignored the question and held a finger to her lips, tilting her head towards the window. Himuro frowned and concentrated on listening. He heard a familiar buzzing sound that made his frown deepen. When he couldn’t hear the buzz anymore, he looked questioningly at Eri. “Was that a jet?”

Eri nodded. “Funny, isn’t it? After they announced that aircraft couldn’t be used because the communication towers were all messed up,” she said.

Himuro hummed. “Wait, so the government’s lying to us?” Kagami asked, confused.

Eri looked at him. “From what we’ve discovered, that’s very likely.”

“But why would they lie to us?” Kagami questioned.

“You’re a little like an ox. Or perhaps I meant to say bull?” Eri replied, going back to her computer.

“There’s no need to be rude, you know,” Kagami answered, folding his arms across his chest. “Don’t answer if you don’t want to.”

“Sorry,” said Eri. “I’m getting frustrated at this,” she gestured at the computer, and then leaned back in her chair, tipping her head to look at Kagami. Somehow, she looked imposing despite her tiny stature. “We don’t know all the details yet, but from what we _do_ know, we can say that it’s very likely that there’s something off about this virus, and that some higher ups are involved in everything. That likely means the government,” she explained, unconsciously tracing over the word “biz” etched into the desk.

Himuro chewed at his lip as he considered her words. “So what are you planning to do to fix it? How many are you?” he asked at length. He grimaced at the last part, remembering that they hadn’t answered the same question when asked.

Eri looked at him, amused. “A few,” she answered.

“We really should head back,” Kagami said, glancing out the window. It was already dark outside.

Yuri spoke up, “It’s too dark to leave now. Besides, Himuro is in no condition to walk, let alone be able to handle himself in case you get attacked.”

Eri nodded in agreement. “It’s best if you stay here tonight,” she said.

At that moment, a strange squeak prompted Himuro to look at his brother, who had gone pale. The cause of Kagami’s distress was a small, black ball of fuzz that Himuro hadn’t known was there. The puppy stared right at the distressed Kagami and gave its tail a little wag.

“She likes you,” Eri said. She snapped her fingers and the puppy rushed over to her. Kagami let out a breath of relief.

“You okay?” Himuro asked Kagami, who nodded. “They’re right. It’s too late to go back now, and my leg still hurts. We don’t really have a choice.”

“If you tell me where your people are, I can possibly have a message delivered to them,” Eri offered.

“How?” Kagami asked.

“Through the blessing of Liber and the focusing of all our qis,” Yuri answered, rubbing the puppy’s belly. 

Himuro thought he was starting to hear things; a glance at Kagami’s face told him that his ears were still functional. 

“There might be some Nus nearby—I can get them to deliver a message to your friends,” Eri answered as if Yuri hadn’t said anything.

“What are Nus?” Himuro asked.

“‘Who are Nus’ would be a better question, Himuro-san,” came a familiar voice from the door. Both Himuro and Kagami turned to stared at the newcomer in shock.

“Kuroko!”   

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: feed, is, good, seed, site, vine, hent, sir sodom, ow, coal, kina, mol, lacey, rep, jet, ox, biz, wag, qis, Liber, nus.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As always, a big thank you to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta.

Midorima felt like he had only been asleep for a few minutes when he was woken up by a toe in his side. He opened his eyes and felt around for his glasses. Putting them on, he saw that Oikawa was staring down at him, eyebrows raised. “Up you get, Tsun-chan. Kise wants you to help Kuroo and Kenma look for our next lair.” Without waiting for an answer, Oikawa spun around and strolled away. Too tired to feel anything about Oikawa’s continuing coldness towards him, Midorima got up and made his way to a sink in the corner, splashing some water on his face and rinsing his mouth. He grabbed his share of breakfast from the pieces set out, and then headed to the other room, assuming that was where he would find someone more helpful than Oikawa.

“Hey,” Kuroo greeted him. “I heard you’re with us today,” he added, stepping behind Kenma after plucking something from his hand. Midorima watched as Kuroo deftly tied Kenma’s hair into a ponytail. When he was done, Kenma touched the nape of his neck, and seemingly satisfied with what he found, started tucking different knives in his clothes. 

“Oikawa didn’t tell me much more than that,” Midorima said, wondering if he should be concerned about where they were going based on the number of knives that had disappeared in Kenma’s clothes.

Kuroo muttered something under his breath before looking up at him. “Don’t worry about it; we’ll fill you in. Grab some weapons—more knives than guns, and some food and water, and then we’ll head out. We’re just going to look for a new hideout for the crew, since this one isn’t really safe. I have an idea where to look, but it’s kind of far, and we might not be able to make it back here before sundown, so we have to be prepared to hole up in a temporary hideout if we need it,” he explained.

Midorima nodded an complied, grabbing a few knives and stowing them away in accessible areas. He then tucked a gun in his waistband. Once they had the supplies they needed for the excursion, Midorima said goodbye to Takao and the three left the hideout. Kuroo led them at a comfortable pace; they were fast enough to not waste too much time, but slow enough to not look like their destination might hold hidden treasures. There were other people on the streets, most in small groups, and most seemed to be around their age. In fact, once Midorima realized this and started looking at the people more closely, he realized that there didn’t seem to be many older adults in the streets, and there were no elderly or any young children at all. He frowned, trying to remember what the population had looked like a few weeks ago. He was almost certain that there had been more older adults, and he remembered seeing at least a few children.

“Find anything interesting?” Kuroo asked lightly, as they walked past a group of young people in tattered clothing who glared at them.

“Where are all the others?” Midorima said.

“Others?”

“The elders, and the children, and the older adults,” Midorima said.

Kuroo’s frown deepened as he looked around more carefully. “I would say all the elders and kids who are still alive are probably holed up, since looking for food and fighting monsters aren’t really jobs you would expect them to handle. I have no answer about older adults, though. To be fair though, it could just be that there were mostly only young adults here to begin with; it is a university town, after all. There’s not much else here, besides the lab that had the biohazard leak and released the virus.”

At that, Kenma made a disapproving sound. “Even so, there were a lot more older adults before than there are now.”

“You know how it started, right?” Kuroo asked Midorima. “Earthquakes, release of virus strain from lab, people turning into monsters?” Midorima nodded, and Kuroo continued. “Then the government essentially just barricaded us in to quarantine the place. Kenma and I got near one of the exits once. We saw a girl get her brains blown out by a sniper, so we just retreated back into the town.”

“They’ve actually got people stationed at the exits?” Midorima asked. He had heard about the barricade on the news, but he hadn’t really thought the government was that serious about keeping them inside the town.

“Yup.”

They were now walking through a residential area Midorima recognized as one with several student houses. It seemed like they were headed towards the university. There were fewer people in the streets here, and most of the houses looked damaged; some of the older ones had collapsed, as the epicentre of the earthquakes had been quite near the university.

“Anyway, after that terrifying attempt at escape, we holed up in a house that wasn’t completely destroyed by the earthquakes but was damaged enough so a lot of people wouldn’t bother us in there; it was a gamble, really. The roof could’ve fallen on us and killed us in our sleep any day. We spend a week—” he broke of and looked at Kenma, who nodded agreement, then continued, “in that house and then a monster attacked us there, so we ran, gathering supplies from wherever we could. We met Oikawa and Iwaizumi first when we were on a supply run, and ran into your friends a couple weeks later. We’ve been a group ever since. I think it’s been about five weeks? Being in a larger group has its problems: we need more supplies and a large enough hideout, but there’s also more people to fight and keep watch, so there’s that.”

“Kuro, where are you taking us?” Kenma asked when he was done.

“Oh, we’re going to look for a place near the lab. There must be some houses that weren’t completely wrecked in the earthquakes. I know for a fact that some of those houses were brand new, so we should have a chance. Plus, closer to the lab should be safer from other people, since most people tend to stay away from the area because they fear catching the virus.”

“Shouldn’t we also fear that?” Midorima asked uncertainly.

Kuroo shook his head. “I’m fairly sure the virus is only transmitted through bites. If it was airborne or waterborne we’d all have been infected ages ago.”

“We’re going to find a place near the lab because you’re _fairly certain_ we won’t get infected unless we’re bitten?” Midorima asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

Midorima looked at Kenma, who said nothing. They had passed the university campus and were now near the ruined laboratory. The earthquakes had resulted in the collapse of the building, and they could see the wreckage as they headed ever closer to it. Kuroo had been right about the houses; some of them were in fairly good condition. Kuroo pointed at a large, detached house in the middle of the block.

“This one looks like it didn’t suffer much damage,” he said. “Let’s check it out, but be on guard,” he said, pushing at the gate, which swung open easily. The three circled the house, observing the windows for any signs of life inside. Some of the windows were cracked, and all of them had the curtains drawn, so they decided to head inside. The door was unlocked, and they entered, knives ready.

The inside of the house was dark and silent, with no signs of current occupation. Kuroo pulled out a flashlight and found a light switch, flipping it on and flooding the hallway with light. A few things were strewn about on the floor, probably having fallen during the earthquakes. Midorima examined a table and found it covered with a thin layer of dust.

“Why don’t we split up?” Kuroo whispered, pulling out his gun. “Doesn’t look like there’s anybody here. I’ll take the basement; Kenma, take the second floor; Midorima, take this floor. If anyone runs into trouble, yell as loud as you can. Use your guns.”

Kenma nodded and headed quietly upstairs, while Kuroo headed downstairs into the basement. Midorima cocked his own gun and decided to walk down the hallway before examining the rooms that branched off it. A quick walk around showed him that this floor had a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, and a bedroom. He headed into the kitchen first, walking around some broken dishes on the floor, and examined the cabinets, some of which still had cans of food in them. The fridge had a carton of expired milk, some mouldy bread and fruit, and some eggs. He cracked some of the eggs in a bowl from the dishrack. The stench and the runniness of the yolks, plus the greenish tinge of the albumin, told him the eggs were past being edible. He dumped them down the sink, and continued the inspection, heading into the living room next.

The living room also seemed like it hadn’t seen any living creatures for a while, as a layer of dust covered the surfaces. Like in the kitchen and the hallway, some things had fallen and rolled on the carpet, but the place looked otherwise untouched. There was a small mac sitting on a table, and when Midorima pushed the power button on a whim, it booted up without a hitch. Not having time to examine the computer fully, Midorima closed it and inspected the bookcase in the corner. There were a variety of different books. He pulled out one at random and opened it on a page that informed him how the deni used to be one-hundredth of a Macedonian denar. He closed the book and carefully slotted it back in its place, running a cursory eye over the other books. There was one that seemed to be some sort of doxy, while another was about human anatomy. There was no real order to the books that Midorima could make sense of, and he decided to move on to the dining room, with a feeling that there was something odd about this house growing in his mind.

The dining room proved to have nothing interesting in it. There was a toppled centerpiece on the table, with dried flowers and a dried puddle around it. Since there didn’t seem to be anything of use in the room, Midorima hurried to the last room and nudged the door open. The bedroom was nicely furnished, and, like the rest of the house, only showed signs of the earthquakes, not of recent occupation. Before he could fully step into the room, he heard something behind him and whirled around to find himself pointing his gun at Kenma.

Kenma put his fingers to his lips and motioned him to step back from the room and follow him to the basement stairs. He knocked at the entrance of the basement in a distinctive pattern, and Kuroo emerged soon after, looking concerned.

“What happened?” he whispered. Midorima saw Kenma make some discreet hand signs, which caused Kuroo’s eyes to widen.

“I need air,” he said aloud. “I don’t feel great.”

“Right, let’s get you out in the garden. We’ll come back inside in a bit,” Kuroo said. “Midorima, is there an exit from the kitchen to the backyard?”

“Yes, there is,” Midorima answered. The three headed out through that exit, and Kenma headed to the farthest corner of the backyard.

“What’s going on?” Midorima asked. “Did you find something?”

Kenma nodded. “The house is bugged. I saw a camera in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I wasn’t sure if it picked up sound, so I didn’t say anything about it in the house.”

Midorima startled, suddenly realizing what had felt wrong. “It looked staged,” he mumbled.

“Oi, speak louder please,” Kuroo said.

“Sorry. The house looks staged from the inside. All the things on the ground, the old food in the kitchen, and the computer didn’t have a passcode on it.”  

 Kuroo frowned, looking at the house. “When I looked in the cabinet behind the mirror in the basement toilet, I found the smallest smudge of blood inside it, besides zit cream, some bandages, and a bottle of dex. There was no other trace of blood anywhere. I looked very carefully, and even checked the garbage for used bandages or bloodstained tissue, since the water doesn’t work, but there was nothing.”

“You think someone cleaned it up?” Midorima asked. Kuroo nodded slowly, still frowning.

“Even if most people don’t come this way, there’s no way this house wasn’t plundered at all,” Kenma said. “Something’s going on.” Midorima agreed with this sentiment. He had been surprised at the number of cans of food in the kitchen.

“This house is almost like a trap, don’t you think?” he said suddenly. Kenma nodded in agreement.

Kuroo chewed his thumb. “What do you say we check out another house that looks like it wasn’t damaged much and see if we that’s been bugged too?” he asked.

“Suppose we do find out there’s another house like this, what then?” Midorima said. “How is that going to help us?”

“It’ll show us that there’s something fishy going on in this area,” Kuroo answered. “You know what, after we check out another house, I want to check out the lab.”

Midorima raised his eyebrows. “The lab is a complete wreck.”

Kuroo shrugged. “Humour me?”

“You think we’re going to find something there?” Midorima persisted. “Do you think the lab has something to do with the cameras in this house?”

“I have a feeling it might. That is, if there’s still something there,” Kuroo said. “We should head back inside, and maybe even take some cans of food.”

“We should try to keep our faces out of any cameras’ view though,” Kenma said. “As much as we can, anyway. I would say take the computer, but it can probably be tracked.”

“Pretend we didn’t see anything, and grab some useful stuff,” Kuroo said. “Then we head to another house, and finally to the lab.”

“As long as we get everything done before sundown. I refuse to stay in a house with cameras,” Midorima said firmly.

“Of course,” Kuroo agreed. “We’re heading back to the old place at the end of all of this. I don’t think we should risk staying in one of these houses, even if we don’t find anything in the next one. It could still be bugged.”

“Alright then. Let’s go,” Kenma said, leading them back in. Midorima stayed in the kitchen and quickly stuffed some cans in his rucksack, then headed to the hallway to wait, keeping his head down in pretense of watching out for broken china and glass.

Kuroo and Kenma didn’t take long, and the three soon exited the house. Walking down the street, they found another decent-looking house a few houses down, and cautiously entered it. This house, like the other one, had things strewn about as if they had fallen in the earthquakes, but didn’t have any signs showing that anyone had entered it before them.

Midorima took the second floor this time, and headed upstairs to find three bedrooms and a bathroom. The bedroom doors were closed, and he had to ram open the first one, which was labelled “Vee’s Room,” because it was stuck. As soon as he opened the door, he found the reason the door was stuck. A body lay behind the door, pushed awkwardly aside because of the force he had applied. It was a young man not much older than himself, lying in a drying pool of blood, his throat slit. A knife had fallen next to him, Midorima noticed with a grimace. He must have suffered before he died. Moving around him carefully, Midorima bent over the body and ran his eyes over all exposed flesh, biting back the urge to get away from the body as quickly as possible. He found what he was looking for very easily: there were bruised and bloody bitemarks on the man’s arm. He had been infected and had chosen to kill himself before he could change into a monster. Midorima backed away from the body and glanced quickly around the room. He couldn’t see any cameras, but he hadn’t expected them to be out in the open. It was sheer luck that Kenma had found one. Midorima hurried out the bedroom. The other bedrooms and the bathroom yielded nothing interesting apart from some medicine that was still usable, which he pocketed before heading downstairs, feeling a little queasy.

Kenma and Kuroo joined him soon after, both shaking their heads. “Didn’t see anything,” Kuroo said once they were outside, “but this place also had a similar air to the other one.”

“There was a dead body in one of the bedrooms upstairs,” Midorima said. “Looked like a suicide. He’d been bitten on the arm.”

Kuroo shook his head sadly. “That’s terrible, but at least it’s one less potential monster to worry about.”

“Let’s go to the lab and then head back,” Midorima said, not wanting to stay in the area for much longer. Kuroo nodded and they made their way to the ruins of the lab. Most of the building had collapsed into a pile of rubble, and only the outside of the first two floors remained. The lab had been called The Institute for Health, Agricultural, and Environmental Science, or TIHAES for short, but the first two letters had fallen off and disappeared in the rubble, and all that was left was HAES.

“So, what do you want to do?” Midorima asked. “The building clearly isn’t being used.”

“Let’s walk around the perimeter and see if there’s anything worth noting,” Kuroo answered. “I’ll take the front third, and you two can split the rest.”

Midorima headed to the left and Kenma to the right, and they began to walk around the rubble. Midorima didn’t see how this would be helpful, but he had the feeling Kuroo had something up his sleeve, and he hadn’t wanted Kenma to know what it was. Which probably meant it was stupid or dangerous (or both), to some degree. Something Takao would do, Midorima thought, observing the remains of the building. Peering into one of the windows, he saw that Kuroo had entered the building. He froze, glancing quickly at Kenma, who was busy examining something on the ground. Kuroo was doing something very dangerous, since the part of the building still standing was likely unstable and could collapse and bury Kuroo inside. While trying to decide on the best course of action, he caught Kuroo’s eye, who gave him a rueful look and gestured at him not to say anything, mouthing that he would be right out.

Sighing, Midorima nodded slightly and went back to his task, glancing back inside every so often to make sure Kuroo was still alive. At one point, he looked up and could no longer see any sign of Kuroo. He darted around and looked through another opening, but the other man seemed to have disappeared.

“Is something wrong?”

Midorima started, looking at Kenma, who had materialised at his side and was looking up at him with narrowed eyes.

“Is Kuro doing something dumb?” he asked, searching Midorima’s face. Before Midorima could decide on how to answer, Kuroo appeared inside the building, and they both watched him exit hurriedly. Rather than wait for him to find them, Kenma stalked around to meet him halfway.

“I can’t believe this. You went _inside_?” he hissed angrily, poking Kuroo hard in the chest. “What if it collapsed on you?”

Kuroo held up his hands placatingly. “I’m sorry, but I wanted to check something out inside and I knew you wouldn’t agree if I told you.”

Kenma gave him a disgusted look, which Midorima was also momentarily on the receiving end of.

“Did you find anything?” Midorima asked stiffly, rather annoyed that Kenma was angry at him because of Kuroo’s stupidity. 

“I did,” Kuroo said. “Let’s head back, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

The others complied, but Kenma still looked irritated, and Midorima still felt annoyed himself.

“Well?” he asked, as they were past the row of houses from earlier.

“The underground part of the lab’s still being used, from what I can tell. The stairs leading downstairs were pretty much intact, and the access card lock on door was functional. I couldn’t wait long enough for someone to exit or enter, since there wasn’t anywhere to hide, and you two were outside, but I’m fairly sure there are people inside.”

“How you know for sure? What if the access card panel just never broke?” Midorima asked. “Was there a window you could see through?”

Kuroo shook his head. “Basement doors don’t tend to have those, unfortunately. I’m still pretty sure it’s in use, though. I think…I should come back and check it out,” he added, shooting a hesitant glance at Kenma.

“We should decide as a group,” Midorima said. “The others will want to know this too. And we need to know what the implications of this are, if it is indeed still being used.”

They hurried back, Kuroo eager to share their discoveries with the others. Halfway back, they ran into Kise, who had gone on today’s supply run, and filled him in. When they got to the part about Kuroo’s suspicions about the lab, Kise laughed humourlessly.

“We’re going to find about all these facades, I bet,” he said. “Nothing’s real, everyone’s lying to us, and all that.”

Midorima was still shocked at the change that had come over his old friend. The new bitter and humourless Kise was somehow the biggest reminder that their lives had changed completely since the earthquakes. Midorima had found cheerful Kise supremely annoying at times, but seeing him now, he found himself wanting to see him smile or whine or say something irritating. He was also vaguely concerned about the fact that Kise seemed to have gone on the supply run by himself, when others always went out in pairs.

“Midorimacchi had the right idea though. We should talk to everyone else about this before you decide to run straight into possible danger, Kuroo,” Kise said. “I really hope Kagamicchi and Himuro are back too. Murasakibaracchi was growing increasingly irritated at their continued absence.”

“They’re not back yet?” Midorima asked, surprised.

Kise shook his head. “They weren’t back before I left earlier this morning. Hopefully they’re not dead and are back by now.”

“We need our child wiz to not be cranky all the time,” Kuroo said. At Midorima’s questioning glance, he added, “Murasakibara. He’s surprisingly great with the kid. Although maybe it’s not that surprising, considering he’s sometimes stubborn like a little kid.” 

 

They made it back without running into trouble, and found Oikawa standing watch. “Made it back in one piece, I see,” he said, scanning them. “Brawn is back without Brain, but he brought a friend. Don’t worry, Brain’s not dead, only injured,” he added before they could ask.

Kise nodded, and they headed inside, where everyone was gathered in one room.

“Midorima-kun, Kise-kun, it has been a while,” came a quiet, polite voice from the center of the room. 

“Kurokocchi,” Kise said. “So, they managed to find you.” He cocked his head and gazed at Kuroko. “Or did you find them?”

“A little bit of both,” Kuroko replied. “Why don’t you join us, and then we can fill each other in. I have important information about the virus.”

To everyone’s surprise, Kise laughed, and then gave his companions a look. “Here’s where we find out about all the lies.” Then turning back to the others, he addressed Kuroko. “We’ve got news too, but you can start.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: lair, nape, jobs, fear, gate, yolks, mac, deni, doxy, oi, dex, zit, ram, vee, haes, facades, wiz.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group heads to the school to learn more about the Nus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta.

“Why don’t you all sit down?” Kuroko said politely, addressing the group that had just arrived. Then he addressed Kuroo and Kenma. “I don’t believe we have met previously? I am Kuroko Tetsuya.”

“Kuroo Tetsurou,” Kuroo said.

“Kozume Kenma. You can call me Kenma,” Kenma said, sitting down next to Kuroo.

Kuroko nodded politely. “Now that we are all gathered here, I will tell you what I have learned so far, and then you can do the same.”

“Before you do that,” Kise said. “Where’s Himuro? Oikawa said he’s not dead, but where is he?”

“We had to leave him at the school we went to stake out because he suffered a gunshot wound to his leg,” Kagami told him. At this, Murasakibara glared at Kagami.

“How'd you fail to mention the part about a gunshot wound when I asked you the same thing two minutes ago?” he said darkly, looking as if he was contemplating punching Kagami.

“He’s going to be fine!” Kagami said hastily. “We left him with people Kuroko trusts and they’re way more experienced with weapons than us.”

“Alright, let’s hear what you’ve got,” Kise said, before Murasakibara could say anything else.

“As you know, I got separated from Kagami-kun before he met up with you and the rest of the group. After I was separated from him, I kept moving to stay safe, since I was alone, but I got lucky and soon ran into Yuri-san and Eri-san. They are ex-members of the special forces, and are now part of an organization called the Nus, which is fighting to discover the truth about the virus.

“They have discovered evidence that the story about the release of the virus was a hoax, and that the release was quite deliberate. Reports about the spread of the virus overseas and across the rest of the country are almost certainly false; the virus has been contained in this town, which is why the exits have snipers stationed around them. There is a ban in place to stop people from entering the town, and an attempt to exit is, of course, met with a bullet in the head or chest.” 

“So, you’re saying the government knows about this bullshit we’re dealing with?” Iwaizumi said angrily.

“It seems very likely, Iwaizumi-san,” Kuroko replied.

“How do you—or the Nus, I suppose—know all this?” Midorima asked.

“Yuri-san was stationed at one of the exits and tasked to prevent inhabitants from leaving. Eri-san discovered some files that suggested that the release of the virus was calculated, and she is still working on decoding the files completely to get more information. She is also the one who discovered that the news of the spread of the virus outside the town is false,” Kuroko explained.

“You trust these women?” Midorima asked.

“Yes, Midorima-kun, I do. They saved my life, and have been saving other lives to gather allies for the organization so that we may discover the truth behind everything and escape this town,” Kuroko replied.

Kise, who Midorima had noticed was listening to everything with his eyes closed, now slowly opened them and blinked, once. “So trusting, Kurokocchi,” he said, but did not add anything else.

“Kurochin said ‘we,’” Murasakibara said, eyebrows raised. “Does that mean Kurochin’s part of the organization?”

Kuroko nodded. “Yes. I believe the Nus are our best chance to get out of here. I don’t think the scientists at the lab plan on letting anyone leave,” he said.

“Didn’t the lab get destroyed in the earthquakes?” Iwaizumi asked.

“About that…” Kuroo began. “I’m pretty sure they’re still using the underground levels of the lab. We’d need to check them out to find out for sure, but that’s what I think. Also, there’s at least one house near the lab that’s been bugged, and staged to look like it was only slightly affected by the earthquakes. We think the house—and possibly others like it—is a trap, but to what end, we don’t know.”

“There’s one more thing,” Kuroko said gravely. Everyone looked at him. “We have reason to believe that the release of the virus was calculated to occur at a point when there were mostly young adults in the town. Have you noticed the lack of children, the elderly, and older adults around?”

“Yeah, but how would they do that? It was centered around the earthquakes. Unless you’re saying they also planned those?” Kise asked.

Kuroko hesitated, considering his words. “We’re not completely certain yet, but it is looking more and more likely that that was indeed what happened.”

This pronouncement was met with shock. “Yikes. That would need a _lot_ of preparation. Even then I’m not sure how they managed to plan earthquakes, if that’s what they did,” Kuroo said.

“Eri-san is trying to access files that could answer that, but so far, she has not succeeded. Which brings me to the next reason for telling you all of this,” Kuroko said.

“The Nus are looking for allies?” Midorima guessed. Kuroko nodded.

“Precisely,” he said. “There are only a few of us at the moment. Ten, to be exact. Yuri-san and Eri-san are the leaders, and the other members are either former special forces members who decided to desert, or people they found, like me. We are looking for more people to infiltrate important positions such as those in the lab, so we can get more information. And of course, we also need more people to be able to have a reasonable group of fighters. I was hoping you would all join the group, so we can work together to escape this place.”

“When did these two women come up with the idea of this group?” Takao asked with a frown.

“They say it was about two months after everything began,” Kuroko said. “It was only recently that they secured a reasonable safehouse, so now they can focus more on recruitment.” 

“And do you know why they haven’t been able to crack the files yet?” Kenma asked curiously.

“I believe Eri-san mentioned something about it having to do with a code related to ogam? I didn’t quite understand what she meant.”

Kenma hummed but didn’t question Kuroko further. Once it was clear that Kuroko had exhausted his story, Kise spoke, “Well, Kurokocchi, you’ve brought us quite an interesting proposition. First things first: you said the group’s secured a safehouse. Can we move there, considering this place isn’t exactly either safe or a house?” 

“Of course. All of you are welcome to join us at the safehouse, whether or not you decide to join the group. I can bring half of you, and Kagami-kun can bring the other half later,” Kuroko said.

“Alright, do we all agree?” Kise asked. Everyone nodded. “Okay, Kurokocchi can take Murasakibaracchi, Mai-chan, Iwaizumi, and Oikawa. Midorimacchi, Takao, Kenma, Kuroo, and I will go with Kagamicchi.”

With that said, the people who needed to leave first began to gather their supplies to take with them, while the others sat back to wait their turn. Kagami decided to take over the watch once Oikawa left.

“How are you feeling?” Midorima asked Takao once the first group was gone. Takao still looked a little pale, but the fever was gone, and dressing on his wound seemed to be holding up well.

Takao smiled at him. “I’m fine, Shin-chan. Doesn’t even hurt all that much.”

“It would be better for all of us if you just tell us the truth, Takao,” Kise said, and tossed a bottle of painkillers at him, before pulling out a couple of sodas from his backpack and tossing one of them over as well.

“Surely I’m not that obvious?” Takao said, swallowing one of the pills.

Kise shrugged. “You’re not. I know a bit about acting, is all.” He quickly packed the rest of the supplies and then settled back down, this time next to Midorima and Takao. “What do you think of the story Kurokocchi just told us?” he asked the room.

Nobody answered him right away. Midorima was still mulling it over in his mind. As much as he wanted to believe it, some part of his mind wouldn’t stop raising questions about the authenticity of the Nus. “I want to believe it,” he said aloud.

“Why not believe it then, Midorimacchi? Consider it a sign?” Kise asked.

Taken aback, Midorima frowned at him. “It would be foolish to just believe it without knowing more about the organization.”

“There’s probably some truth to it,” Kuroo said. “Hard to spin a tale like that with nothing to go on.”

“Kenma? Takao? What do you two say?” Kise asked.

“I think…we should go talk to these women and learn more about it before we pledge allegiance,” Kenma said.

“If the whole operation is legit, it’s probably our best bet for getting out of here alive and relatively unharmed,” Takao added with a shrug. “We could use some people who know what they’re doing. And this might even let some of us make better use of our skills.”

“What do you mean?” Midorima asked him curiously.

“I’m guessing we’re all university students. So, we probably all have different majors, and thus, different areas of expertise. Also, some of us are probably graduate students?” he asked the question looking at Kuroo.

“Yeah, you’re right. Iwaizumi, Oikawa, and I are graduate students. You all look like upper year undergrads,” Kuroo replied. “True. They might be able to use some of our skills.”

The conversation dissolved into silence as everyone retreated into their thoughts. Midorima found himself longing to get out of this town, to find out if his sister and his parents were okay. Although he still had his phone and was able to charge it occasionally, there was no way to contact anyone; communications had been down since a little after the earthquakes. He glanced at Takao, who was lying down with his back facing Midorima. He must be worried for his sister and parents too, and they for him. Everyone’s parents would be worried for them, he thought. Everyone except Kise’s, he remembered with a pang. Kise’s parents had died in a car accident a year ago, and now his sisters were dead too. It was unfair that Kise had lost the entirety of his immediate family and a good friend in quick succession. He looked lost in thought as Midorima watched, but then looked at him, as if he could feel the weight of Midorima’s gaze on him.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Midorimacchi?” Kise asked.

“Like what?” Midorima asked, surprised. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kuroo and Kenma also turn to him in interest, and heard a rustle from beside him, as Takao had no doubt turned around to look at him as well.

“Like you feel sorry for me,” Kise said, voice devoid of emotion and lips downturned in displeasure. “Keep your pity. I don’t want it,” he added before Midorima could say anything, and looked away, signalling the end of the very short, one-sided conversation.

Midorima opened his mouth to say something—what he wanted to say, he didn’t know—but Takao caught his arm and shook his head to stop him.  

They all sat in silence until Kagami looked in. He must have felt the slight air of discomfort in the room, because he started uncertainly. “Er…should we head out now?” 

“Sounds like a great idea,” Kuroo said cheerfully, waiting for Kenma to get up before jumping up and grabbing his bag. “We’re ready when you are, to head out on this fine eve.”

The others followed his lead and grabbed their own bags, following Kagami out. After they had been walking for twenty minutes or so, it became clear that Kagami had not carefully planned this out so they would reach the school before sunset, which was approaching quickly.

“Kagami, it’s going to be dark very, very soon,” Kuroo said. “Are we close?”

“Uh…another twenty or so minutes,” Kagami replied, looking worried.

“Better get your weapons ready,” Kise said, pulling his gun out. “Monsters will be out soon.”

“Hopefully we won’t run into any,” Takao muttered, cocking his own gun.

“Um…” Kagami said.

“That doesn’t sound promising,” Kise noted. “Spit it out.”

“We have to pass a stretch of forest to get to the school.”

Midorima groaned inwardly. Takao groaned out loud.

“You didn’t think of telling us this before?” Kenma said. Midorima could hear the edge of anger in the quiet voice. Kuroo sighed and said something to Kenma, too low for the others to hear.

“This is clearly not the ideal situation, but we can work with it,” Kuroo said. “We’ve still got two bottles of highly corrosive liquids that we can use if we need to. Kenma is a great shot, Kise and I are decent, and Kise is good with knives. If we get attacked, avoiding the bite is most important. Claws shouldn’t be able to spread the virus.”

“Kagamicchi, keep leading us. Takao, you have good eyes, keep a lookout for any movement around us and alert us if you think you see anything. Even if you think it was your imagination. Midorimacchi, you’re our second lookout. Kuroo, take the back. Kenma, left, Kagamicchi, front, and I’ve got the right and close combat,” Kise added.

“Ay, sir,” Takao said, scanning the area.

“Try to shoot before they get close to us,” Kuroo said. “If they do happen to get close, get out of the way and let Kise handle close combat. If you need help shooting, shout for Kenma and he’ll help you out.”

They quickly got in formation and hurried onward, weapons ready. In another five minutes, the sun had disappeared and darkness had surrounded them. They could not risk using flashlights, and the streets they were on were not properly lit, which made it more difficult to spot monsters in the shadows. They moved as quickly as they could without stumbling or breaking formation, with Takao and Midorima watching carefully for any movement that might signal threats. They reached the forest without running into any monsters, but as they approached the blackness that indicated the forest, it became harder and harder to see. The fact that it was a cloudy night did not help matters, and they had to use a flashlight.

As soon as Takao switched on the flashlight, there was rustling from the forest, and shapes hurtled out towards them. Two of the monsters dropped before they could reach them, Kenma having shot them. Kise managed to shoot another before they got close enough for them to have to start retreating to avoid getting bitten. Midorima stepped back as one of them swiped its claws at him, and shot it in the chest. When the body twitched, he shot it again on reflex. It did not move again.

A growl from his right prompted him to turn quickly and barely avoid a bite. Off-balance, he swung his arm and caught the monster in the temple with his gun before landing on the ground. The monster recovered quicker than he did, and was about to jump on him when Kise yanked its head back and slit its throat somewhat messily, spattering Midorima with blood. 

“Okay, Midorimacchi?” he asked as Midorima hastened to his feet. Midorima nodded, and Kise hurried to help Takao, who had two monsters gaining on him and was in no position to fight them while keeping the flashlight positioned so the rest of them could fight. Midorima started towards them as well but was stopped by another monster that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Hurriedly stepping back, he shot it in the head, then stepped around the body to finish off an injured one that was crawling towards Kuroo. He saw Kenma, who had been keeping monsters as far away from them as he could, run out of bullets as three more monsters burst out from the forest.

“Kenma!” he called, and tossed the gun to him, pulling out knives to use for himself. Kenma managed to shoot one of the three, then turned on the second, while the third shifted its attention to Midorima, who slashed at its arms when it got too close. The monster growled and lunged at him, bringing him down. Monster and man grappled, the monster’s stinking jaws coming too close for comfort and its claws digging into Midorima’s skin. Midorima finally managed to stick his knife into the monster’s neck, and shuddered in disgust as warm liquid dripped onto him from the wound he had caused. He pushed the monster’s body off him and quickly got up, nauseous. The sounds of fighting had ceased, he noticed, unable to tear his eyes away from the mess around him. He could see everything more clearly that before; there must have been a rift in the clouds that had let out the moon.

“Kise, are you okay?” came Takao’s concerned voice, snapping Midorima’s attention away from the blood, gore, and dead monster bodies around his feet and causing his heart to drop. The others were huddled together, around what he could only assume was an injured Kise. He hurried over, and relief flooded him when he saw that Kise didn’t seem to be grievously injured, since Kuroo was calmly tying a piece of cloth around his arm.

“I’ll disinfect it again once we’re at the school. This should be good to stop the bleeding until I can dress it up properly,” Kuroo said, tying a final knot and getting up. Kise took his proffered hand and got up, wincing as he put weight on his right foot. 

“Looks like I rolled my ankle,” Kise said, testing it again and grimacing in pain. He looked up at Midorima then, and his eyes widened. “Midorimacchi, is any of that yours?” he asked sharply. The others turned to look at him.

Midorima looked down at his blood-drenched shirt, and fought back another wave of revulsion. “No. I’m unhurt,” he said.

“Alright, we better move now,” Kuroo said. After a quick look at Kise’s ankle, he added: “Midorima, you and I will help Kise the rest of the way. He won’t be able to walk on that foot. It’s already starting to swell.”

Thankfully, they made it to the school without any further attacks, and heaved a sigh of relief when Murasakibara opened the doors to let them in and led them to a classroom where everyone was waiting. The desks and chairs had been pushed to the sides, and it had been converted into a makeshift sleeping area. Midorima and Kuroo set Kise down on one of the beds that looked like they had been brought up from the nurse’s office.

Everyone else was here, Midorima noted with relief, with Mai already asleep on one of the beds, and there were two women who must be the leaders Kuroko had been talking about. The shorter of them had already grabbed a first aid kit and was wrapping Kise’s ankle, while Kuroo undid the makeshift bandage and began to dab some antiseptic onto the wound. He also saw that Himuro was indeed alive, and that one of his legs was heavily bandaged.

“The captain and the coxswain,” the taller woman said suddenly.

“I’m very glad that you all made it, if not completely unharmed,” the shorter one said, as if the other woman had said nothing at all. “I am Eri, and that is Yuri. You can all introduce yourselves after you have cleaned up and made sure you have no injuries that require tending,” she said. “You will find clean clothing in boxes in the room to the right.”

Midorima quickly headed to the room, eager to remove his blood-soaked clothing. Digging into the boxes, he pulled out a pair of loose pants that fit him, and a surprisingly nice button-down shirt from under a jean jacket. He headed back to join everyone else, and found Murasakibara handing out food to the group that had just arrived. He gratefully accepted an open can of mixed fruit and sat on the unclaimed sleeping bag next to the bed Kise was sitting on, his arm and ankle neatly bandaged. A moment later, Takao, also freshly dressed in clean clothes, plopped down on Midorima’s other side.

“I see you found a shirt to suit your style, Shin-chan,” he said, taking a bite out of a granola bar.

Before Midorima could answer, Eri addressed spoke, and everyone turned their attention to her. “Now that we’re all here, it’s time to get down to business. Kuroko already told you about the organization, I’m guessing. I would like to reiterate that whether you choose to join is completely up to you, and that you are welcome to stay here regardless of your choice. However, I will say that it would be in everyone’s best interests to join us, since we will be focusing on gathering intelligence, allies, and ammo to get out of the city.

“Yuri and I were part of the special forces tasked to keep everyone inside the city, but we decided to desert when we realized that the government and the scientists at the lab were not being truthful about the circumstances surrounding the release of the virus into the city. The report that the release was accidental was a hoax, and the virus is certainly not spreading around the world as you were all initially told, when the government was still providing you with ‘updates’ about the release. We realized that to find out the complete truth, we would need help, and that’s when we decided to create an organization by recruiting people who could provide us with different areas of expertise.

“We’ve been gathering allies slowly, and we have managed to get our hands on a fair amount of supplies like the clothes in the other room. I have been working on gaining access to and decoding files and data that can help us understand what is happening in this town. Of course, we need a lot more help to actually accomplish anything.

“If you choose to join us, we will decide what role you will play based on your abilities. The idea is to eventually infiltrate the laboratory, which should allow us to get all the information we need to combat the virus and escape the town. Let us know what you have decided by tomorrow, and then we will create a plan structured around what each member is best at doing.”

Midorima noted that Eri had not told them much more than Kuroko had that morning, except mentioning that they had supplies, and that there was a vague plan for the organization.

“When you say ‘role,’ what do you mean?” Takao asked.

“Well, depending on what you know and what you can do, you’ll be assigned a different task. We’re looking at people who can convincingly fit into the lab, people who can access computer files, people who are good at finding supplies and killing monsters. Things like that,” Eri explained.

“None of us are great at killing monsters,” Kise remarked, pulling absently at the bandage around his ankle. Instinctively, Midorima pushed his hand away to stop him.

“You’ve all survived so far, so you can’t be that bad. But don’t worry, Yuri is well-acquainted with weapons, and she will teach whoever is given that role how to properly use them. Everyone else will also be taught the basics. Anything else?” she asked, looking around. When nobody else spoke, she closed her laptop and stood. “Then you should all get some rest, and discuss what we have told you. Yuri and I will keep watch tonight.” She smiled at them, then left the classroom, Yuri following her.

“All in favour of joining?” Himuro asked everyone once the women had left. Everybody raised their hand. Midorima noticed that Kise waited for everyone else before raising his own. “I guess that’s that, then,” Himuro said. “Let’s try to get some sleep now. We could all use it.” Murmuring agreement, they settled down, some falling asleep immediately, others whispering in pairs or small groups before falling asleep.

“What do you think, Midorimacchi?” Kise asked him quietly, sometime later. Midorima, who had almost fallen asleep, jerked awake. Kise patiently repeated his question.

“About joining, or about the group?” Midorima asked.

“Both.”

“I think…that joining is probably the best idea. They have supplies, which probably includes weapons. And I have no better ideas about how to escape this town.”

Kise was silent for a while before he answered. “I think we should be careful.”

Even though he hadn’t specified what he was talking about, Midorima understood what he meant, and realized that he agreed. “Yes, we should,” he whispered back. 

“I will see them razed to the ground, or die trying,” Midorima heard Kise whisper sometime later, so low that he almost didn’t catch it. It was clear that Kise had not meant for anyone to overhear him, so Midorima said nothing and tried to go to sleep, feeling disconcerted at the thought that Kise was willing to die in pursuit of what sounded like a desire for vengeance. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: how, ex, ban, yikes, few, ogam, smiled, sodas, spin, er, eve, ay, sir, rift, dab, cox, jean, style, razed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta.

Despite being in a safe place with two ex-special forces agents keeping watch, Kise slept fitfully, dreaming about things he’d rather forget, and waking up with his heart racing more than once during the night. Finally, he gave up and sat on the bed, waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark, and quietly slipped out of the room, trying not to put too much weight on his injured ankle.

He slipped into the room next door and sank into a chair next to the window, resting his head against the blinds. He sat there, eyes closed but wide awake, listening to the rise and fall of his own breathing.

Quiet steps prompted him to open his eyes and find a tall silhouette in the room with him. “Midorimacchi.”

“I heard you leave the room,” Midorima said.

“Needed fresher air.”

“You should keep off your injured ankle,” Midorima said.

“I should.”

“You’re not going to.” A statement, not a question.

Kise shrugged in the darkness, not bothering to reply. Midorima waited, but when no reply was forthcoming, took at seat and put his head on the desk. A few minutes later, Kise heard his breathing even out. Listening to Midorima’s breathing, Kise also drifted off into sleep.

 

“Rise and shine, sleeping beauty.” Kuroo’s voice pulled Kise out of a dream where he had been trying to escape from something. He opened his eyes and cracked his stiff neck, a thin blanket slipping off him. 

Kuroo handed him a bottle of water and a granola bar. “I’m going to call everyone over, now that you’re awake.” He paused, gazing at Kise’s face. “I’ll try to see if there’s any lude in the medical supplies. You could probably use some.” With that, he stepped out of the room to call the others, leaving Kise to wonder just how bad his eyebags were that morning.

Everyone started filing into the room a moment later. Eri and Yuri were the last to enter. Everyone settled down, and then Eri began to talk.

“Now that you’ve all rested and had time to think about our proposal, how many of you would like to join the Nus?” she asked, looking around expectantly. Everyone nodded their head.

“Perfect,” she said, looking pleased. “Now, the plan is to give everyone a task that will help us escape from the city. For that, we need to find out the truth. To find out the truth, we are going to infiltrate the laboratory. Does anyone here have any skills that you think could be useful for this role?” she asked.

“If you need someone with a scientific background, I’m your guy,” Kuroo offered. “I’m a PhD chemistry student, and studied chem, bio, and neuroscience in my undergrad. That could be useful, if you can somehow get me a position as an assistant scientist or something.”

Eri nodded, visibly pleased. “I will work on it. It might take some time, but we should be able to arrange it.”

“Arrange a spot for me, too, because I’m staying with Kuroo,” Kenma said firmly.

Eri looked at him. “What background do you have?” she asked.

“Math,” he replied. Kise’s eyebrows rose. Kenma hadn’t lied to Eri, but he had omitted a lot in his answer.

Eri looked like she was about to say something, but Kuroo spoke. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. He goes with me, or I don’t go at all.”

Eri conceded with a nod. “Any other groups we need to consider when we do this?” she asked. Suddenly, everyone seemed to have paired up. Kagami and Kuroko, Himuro and Murasakibara, Iwaizumi and Oikawa, Midorima and Takao. Somehow, Midorima and Takao had ended up next to Kise, making them the only trio in the room. Eri raised her eyebrows.

“I see. Well, this might make most assignments easier. I think we should have another pair in the lab. Not necessarily as scientists, but doing something else, perhaps? Anyone?”

“Iwa-chan and I can do that,” Oikawa said. “I’m a psych major. That could be useful.”

“We also need to have someone recruit more allies, of course. Kuroko, I want you on this task. Kagami can join you.”

Kuroko and Kagami nodded.

“Does anyone here know first aid?” she asked. Kuroo, Himuro, and Midorima nodded.

“Alright then. We should have someone who knows first aid at the safehouse at all times. And the team that goes out to gather supplies and kill monsters will always have someone who knows first aid. You can share this job,” she said nodding at Himuro and Murasakibara, and then at Takao, Midorima, and Kise. “One team here, one out. You can decide who does what depending on the situation.”

“Since Atsushi is the best at keeping Mai-chan happy, I suspect we’ll be staying in more than often than not,” Himuro said. Kise had no objection. Mai was attached to him, but not as much as she was to Murasakibara. Besides, being around her was often a painful reminder of how she had come to be with them in the first place. He was happy to leave the joys of babysitting to Murasakibara.  

Eri looked like she was going to say something, but thought better of it and nodded instead. “Excellent. Now, of course we’ll have to wait for the injured to recover before we can begin anything. We need to get our moles into the lab, and we also need to train the rest of you on how to use weapons. Those who are not injured can begin tomorrow.”

“How long do you think getting us into the lab will take?” Oikawa asked.

“That depends on how soon we can create convincing roles for you to play. I am working on getting access to the lab computers, which I believe will help. Hopefully we’ll be able to get at least one team into the lab in a few weeks.”

“What do we do in the meanwhile?” Kuroo asked.

“Lab teams stay in here. We want to minimize the risk of having you seen by someone who works in the lab. Others will start going on supply runs as soon as possible. The lab teams can occupy themselves with sorting supplies that are already here, and the ones the other teams bring in.”

“To pass the time,” came Yuri’s voice, quite unexpectedly, “there are books in the library and sometimes in the classrooms as well. I recently found a book with quite an emotional modern alba about a don and her wives. One of them is a dato.”

Everyone stared at her in silence, then Takao said, “You’ll have to lend it to me when you’re done.” She ignored him.

“I think that’s all I have for now,” Eri said. “I’m going to head back to my office and work on getting into the lab. Kuroko, Kagami, with me, please. You two can leave for your task in a couple of days, and I have some details for you.” She left the room, Kuroko and Kagami trailing behind. Yuri followed them.

A moment later, Murasakibara also left, claiming that Mai needed his attention. Kuroo looked at the people remaining in the room. “Alright, I think it’s time to change wound dressings. Midorima, you take care of Takao and Kise. I’ve got Himuro and Iwaizumi.” Which was a smart call, Kise thought, since Oikawa would probably not have trusted Midorima to go near Iwaizumi.

Kise watched as Midorima tended to Takao’s leg, removing the dressing to let it air and moving to Kise. Kise sat in silence as Midorima looked at his arm first, removing the dressing and gently applying some ointment, and moving on to his foot, which he rebandaged just as gently.

“The swelling has gone down,” Midorima commented, tying the bandage off. “You should still keep off it,” he added a little sharply, as if recalling their earlier conversation. “You are going to be at the helm of the teams that stay behind, and are going to need both your feet fully functional.”

Once the injured had been tended to, there was nothing to do except discuss their assignments and how they might help them escape the city. Kise listened to the others, but didn’t say anything unless directly asked a question.

“Kise, you’ve changed, haven’t you?” Takao asked at one point, after more serious conversations had been exhausted. “You used to be so cheerful and…silly.”

“Silly?” Oikawa asked, eyebrows raised. “Pics or it isn’t true. I don’t think I’ve seen Kitsun genuinely happy since I’ve met him. And he definitely isn’t _silly_.” 

“We’re stuck in a town with a virus that turns people into murderous, clawed, fanged monsters. Hardly a time for silliness, is it?” Kise said. He really didn’t want the conversation to focus on him for much longer.

“Fair enough,” Takao relented, but Kise could sense his reluctance to drop the subject. That would be a problem for later. “You’ve still managed to stay sexy, though, which is impressive,” Takao added, an attempt at changing the subject. 

“Fortunately for me,” Kise said drily. “Is anyone keeping a lookout at the gate right now?” he asked the room.

“Oikawa, Iwaizumi, why don’t you go check?” Kuroo suggested. Iwaizumi gave Kuroo an inscrutable look and then walked out of the room. Oikawa didn’t look pleased at the proposition, but followed Iwaizumi out without complaining.

“Hmm, I guess I’ll go see if Atsushi needs any help managing Mai-chan,” Himuro said a while later, and slowly walked out.

Kuroo looked at Midorima and Takao and then at Kise, raising his eyebrows.

“It’s fine,” Kise said. “You can say whatever you want to say in front of them.”

Kuroo gave him a shrewd look that made him a little uncomfortable, but didn’t press. Then he turned to Kenma, as if encouraging him to speak up.

“You know I didn’t tell them the complete truth,” Kenma stated. Kise nodded. He had been wondering if they would bring it up themselves or if he would have to ask. This would make things easier.

“I think it’s smart if they don’t know about all my skills. Kuroo agrees,” Kenma continued.

“What are we talking about?” Takao asked.

“We also agree that we’re going to be keeping in touch with you specifically from the lab, and giving you separate reports of what we find,” Kenma said, ignoring Takao.

“You don’t trust these women,” Midorima stated. Kenma nodded.

“ _Why_ though?” Takao said, frowning.

Kenma thought for a moment, before answering slowly. “I suppose it’s less a matter of distrust than relative trust.”

“What he means,” Kuroo explained, “is that we trust Kise more than we trust these people that we met very recently.”

“You could say the same about us,” Takao said, indicating himself and Midorima.

“You’re right,” Kenma said bluntly. “But Kise trusts you, clearly, or you wouldn’t be hearing any of this.”

“Aren’t you friends with Oikawa?” Midorima asked.

Kuroo shrugged. “Yes, we’re good friends, but the fewer people know, the better. Besides, he and Iwaizumi will be in the lab too, so they don’t really need to know. He probably doesn’t trust them either, to be honest. He’s a smart guy.” 

“We’ll have to plan the communication carefully,” Kise said, ideas already forming in his head. “Define a system and lay down the rules.” 

“We can start thinking about it,” Midorima said. “But we should make sure we don’t do anything that could alert Eri and Yuri about our intentions. Or Kuroko and Kagami,” he added as an afterthought. Kise was a little surprised at this announcement, but then he remembered how much of a logician Midorima could be, and logically, this decision was sound.

“Yeah, he trusts these women way too much, in my opinion,” Takao said. “It’s a little weird, really. Hmm…do you think there’s a keg of beer in here somewhere? I could use a drink,” he added with a grin. He was clearly done with seriousness for now, Kise thought, fighting back a flash of irritation.

“I highly doubt it,” Midorima said. “You could do something useful instead.”

“You’re right. I’m going to play the role of sizer for all those clothes in the supplies,” Takao said. “The way they’ve been carelessly tossed in the boxes bothers me.” With that, he bounced out of the room, as much as his injured leg would allow.

“I am going to take a nap,” Kenma said. “Are you coming?” he said to Kuroo, who grinned at him and followed him with a “si, señor.” The two exited the room, leaving Kise alone with Midorima. For some reason, Kise felt like pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Do you want to go to another room?” Midorima asked him.

“Did you put the blanket around me last night?” Kise asked despite himself.

Midorima looked taken aback. “Yes. I woke up a little while after falling asleep, and it was chilly,” he said. Kise thought Midorima looked like he didn’t quite believe himself. Silence followed, and Midorima busied himself by examining the contents of a box in the corner of the room. He pulled out a small container and frowned.

“What is it?” Kise asked him.

“It says ‘Os.’”

“Os?” Kise echoed.

“I hope that doesn’t mean osmium or bone.”

“Open it and check,” Kise suggested, observing Midorima’s concern. Midorima dug into the box and pulled out what looked like a rag and used it as a makeshift glove to open the container. As soon as he opened it, the tension in his expression melted.

“A plastic bone,” he said, putting it back. “Strange thing to have here but better than having a real bone. Or osmium.” He pulled out a thin book from the box, sat down in a chair, and began to read it.

“Is it any good, Midorimacchi?” Kise asked after a while, having nothing else to distract himself with. “What’s it called?”

Midorima looked up from the book, then looked at the book’s cover. “It’s called _Ae Wo_ _._ I don’t know if it’s good, but there is a phrase that I find really…fitting for this entire situation. Ora pro nobis.”

‘Pray for us.’ Fitting indeed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: rise, air, lude, joys, alba, don, wives, dato, helm, pics, sexy, gate, define, keg, sizer, si, os, ae, wo, ora.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta.

Kise hurried to the rendezvous point, replaying the argument he had had with Midorima about his solitary excursions to meet with Kuroo or Kenma. Midorima was becoming increasingly disapproving about him going out alone, but Kise insisted that it was safer if only one of them was closely involved in contact with their friends in the lab. While Kenma had managed to find a way to contact them from inside the lab, they only used them to send Kise the location and time of the next meeting place, choosing to relay information in person.

   He walked past a sheltered bus stop and slipped into one of the houses, where Kuroo was waiting. “You made it,” he said by way of greeting. This had been their second meeting since Kuroo and Kenma had been stationed in the lab, about three and a half months ago. At their first meeting, Kuroo had informed him that the scientists were taking a while to warm up to him, while most people in the lab had almost immediately taken to Kenma, and now jokingly called him their coven leader. Kuroo looked a little more tired than he had been last time. “Okay, let’s just get into it. I overheard two of the scientists, Josh and Cox, talking about a dimer that interrupts the incorporation of viral mRNA into the host system, and something about a bisphosphonate, although I’m not sure how that would be related at all.”

   Feeling a mixture of amusement and irritation, Kise interrupted Kuroo before he could continue with his scientific jargon. “Kuroo. Not a scientist,” he said flatly. Kuroo blinked and then smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry. What I mean to say is, they were talking about something that sounded like a cure, and they stopped talking as soon as they realized I was still there. Which made me wonder if it was a trap, but Kenma dug around some more, and there is for sure a cure for the virus somewhere in the lab. Obviously, they don’t trust me enough to tell me about it, but I’m going to try to find out more about it, as well as how much they have and if I can smuggle some of it out to you.”

This was great news. If this cure was real, that meant they could actually help the people who had been bitten instead of killing them. “Do you think we should tell them about it?”

“Well. My instructions from Eri were to find out as much as I could about the _virus_ , not a vaccine,” Kuroo said, eyebrow raised. “Even after I brought up the hypothetical situation about a vaccine existing.”

Kise nodded. It was decided, then. They would keep this information to themselves, and he would have a discussion with Midorima and Takao about what they could and should do with it. “Alright. We’re not telling them then. What are they having Kenma work on?”

“I don’t really understand? He was talking about the z-axes not working out the last time I asked him about it, but he gave me a really annoyed look when I asked what he meant, so I just left him alone.”

Kise hummed, not really paying attention, already thinking about what to do with the information he had just learned. Kuroo apparently noticed, because he said, “Okay, we should head back now. Kenma’s going to yell at me if I’m not back soon. Be careful on your way back.”

The two parted ways, and Kise decided to take a different route back to the school. His team had gone on a supply run the day before, and they had run into some trouble with a gang in the area on their way back. The ensuing fight had been exhausting, and he must have been still feeling the effects because he realized too late that he was being followed. Cursing himself for his inattention, he stopped and turned around, facing three people with handkerchiefs covering the lower halves of their faces, threateningly holding knives.

“Really? Nobody cares what you look like,” he said casually. They were too close to risk making a sudden move that could prompt them to toss their knives at him. He remained still, assessing the situation, not liking his options.

“Looks like this one’s got snark,” the person on the left said, moving around him to his side, as the person on the right did the same. It was impossible to keep them both in his line of sight, so he focused on the person in front of him. “You won’t be snarky when we slit your throat, pretty boy.”

“And what good will that do to anyone?” Kise asked calmly. “I have nothing on me.”

“You’re right,” the person in the middle replied, just as calmly. “Maybe we should slowly skin you, so you can tell us useful information.”

“You’d have to get closer for that, now wouldn’t you?” Kise said.

“Or I could just have my friends here do it while I direct them.”

At this, the person on the left lunged at him, but he ducked and swept their legs from under them. The person on the left made to slash at him with the knife but he dodged and twisted their knife-wielding arm, hard. The knife dropped with a clunk. He smashed his head into their face, hearing a crack as they fell back with a cry. The person on the ground had gotten up, and as he moved to attack, he caught sight of the third person out of the corner of his eye. He moved instinctively, a split-second before a loud pow lit his cheek on fire. The bastard had shot at him. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he pulled the person he was scuffling with in front of him just in time for the next bullets to hit them. Dropping the body, he tossed his knife at the third person, hitting true. The knife embedded itself in their stomach and they gasped. Before they could recover enough to shoot at him, Kise pulled out his own gun and shot. The person dropped, and Kise quickly stripped the dead bodies of their weapons. The person whose nose he had broken had run away. Weapons gathered, he hurried back, still gritting his teeth against the pain from his burning cheek.

 

Midorima paced the classroom, growing increasingly worried at Kise’s continued absence. Dozens of possible reasons for the delay presented themselves to him, each one worse than the last.

“Shin-chan, don’t worry. He’ll be back soon. Maybe their meeting ran longer than expected,” Takao tried to reassure him, without success.

It was another ten torturous minutes of waiting before they heard footsteps in the hallway and Kise finally entered the classroom. After the first initial burst of relief at the fact that Kise was alive, Midorima noticed the paleness of his face and the blood on his cheek.

“What happened?” he asked, heart stopping. “Are you okay?”

Kise dropped into a chair and gritted out, “Bullet.” Midorima promptly pulled out antiseptic and cleaned Kise’s wound. He had been lucky, he thought, fear giving way to anger, hot and sharp.

“You’re lucky you didn’t lose an eye or get your brains blown out,” he snapped at Kise, who said nothing. “How did it happen?”

“Got caught unawares,” Kise answered.

“ _What?_ You weren’t paying attention _knowing_ you were alone?” Midorima asked, struggling to keep his voice from rising. When Kise only shrugged, Midorima felt his fear for Kise’s lack of concern for his own safety explode. “Do you have a death wish? Do you think you don’t deserve to live? Is it survivor’s guilt? Is that what it is?” he said, his whisper getting louder with every sentence.

The last part hit close to home, he seemed to register as Kise’s expression became blank. Then in a low, ice-cold voice, Kise said, “ _Why do you care, Midorimacchi?_ You didn’t care for anyone before, with that cold heart of yours. Why start now? _”_

Speechless, Midorima watched as Kise grabbed the gauze he was going to apply to his wound and stalked out of the room.

“Well, that was telling,” Takao’s mild voice startled Midorima out of his shock. He stared at his friend, who gave him a wry smile. “Give him some time, Shin-chan, then talk to him.” Jumping up and heading to the door, he joked, “I’m going to see if this place has a silo.” At the door, he turned and added, “For the record, I don’t think he meant what he said, Shin-chan.”

 

“Kuroko, are you sure this is a good idea? This isn’t on the list, and we were told to stick to the lists,” Kagami said, worriedly. The two had been on a mission to recruit people from a list to the Nus. Eri had instructed them to stick to the list, but they had stumbled upon a house that seemed to be inhabited, and Kuroko wanted to try recruiting them as well, since he felt it was only fair that these people should also be given a chance to escape this place. He only nodded firmly in response to Kagami’s question, as they headed up the stairs, where the people likely were.

Pushing open a bedroom door, Kuroko saw a young man not much older than them sitting in a corner. “Hello,” he said softly. The man started and stared at them, seeming to shrink further into himself. “We’re not going to hurt you,” Kuroko said, gently. “We can help.”

“Help?” the man laughed, a short, hopeless sound. “How can you help?”

“Well, we know a place where you’ll be safe. There are supplies and medicine and other people, and we’re all working together to escape from the city,” Kuroko said.

“Yeah?” the man said, a faint note of hope creeping into his voice, before he clamped it down and stared suspiciously at them. “How do I know you won’t just kill me for this house?” he asked.

“I don’t have any weapons on me,” Kuroko said, raising his hands as a gesture of peace. He had insisted in not being visibly armed, despite Kagami’s insistence.

The man still looked suspicious. “And who runs this shelter of yours, eh?”

“Well, it’s an organization called the Nus, which—” Kuroko cut off in surprise as a look of pure terror crossed the man’s face and then dissolved into rage.

“KEEP YOUR FUCKING LIES AWAY FROM ME!” he screamed, launching himself at Kuroko, a metal bar in his hand. Before he could strike Kuroko, there was a gunshot, and the man dropped to the floor, dead.

Kuroko stared first at the dead man, then at Kagami, utterly shocked. “Let’s get out of here, Kuroko. This was a bad idea. The guy was crazy,” Kagami said, grabbing his arm and pulling him out of the room.

Kuroko let Kagami drag him, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the man’s rage-filled last words. A question began to gnaw at him, and he knew he would have to get some answers if he wanted to continue with what he was doing. He formulated a plan as they walked, and then filled Kagami in. Kagami was reluctant at first, but eventually relented, after Kuroko assured him that they would go see the others as soon as he had laid his suspicions to rest. Kuroko didn’t blame him; his little detour had happened on their way back to see the others, and their missions often kept them away from headquarters for weeks at a time. In the four months since they had been doing this, they had only seen everyone else three times. Kuroko could tell Kagami was eager to get back and make sure Himuro was okay.

Kagami stood outside the room, keeping watch, as Kuroko quickly rifled through some files on the desk. He wanted desperately to be wrong, but he knew he had to find out. They probably didn’t have a lot of time to do this, and he doubted he would get another chance anytime soon. It was now or never. Most of the files were what he would expect to find, like lists of rations, arranged in neat little piles. He opened one file and the first page he found was labeled ‘wardens’ and had a short list of names. Looking at the next few pages, Kuroko’s blood ran cold. Feeling his chest constrict, he quickly flipped through the rest of the file, growing increasingly alarmed at what he was seeing. They needed to get out of here. He put the file back and began to arrange the other files, so it wouldn’t look like they had been tampered with, when a muffled sound made him pause, heart pounding.

He looked around him quickly, looking for a gap to squeeze through, a niche to hide in. He was just about to move to attempt to hide, when the door opened, and someone stepped in. He tried to catch a glimpse of the outside, but the door was shut before he could.

“Don’t worry, his body’s already going cold. I’m sure he didn’t feel a thing.”

Kuroko was speechless with terror, and could only stare as the person in front of him leveled a gun at his head. The last thing he saw was a cruel smile and hard eyes, and then the world went dark.

 

“What a mess,” the voice said, looking down at the dead body. “These should be moved before they ruin the floors with blood or start to stink up the place. I’ll have some cleaners take them, possibly dump them at the quay. Quite unfortunate, really.”

 

After dressing his wound, Kise decided to go to the training room they had set up in the gym, and throw some punches at the punching bag, even though his cheek still stung terribly. He needed a distraction from the pain, but more importantly, he needed to distract himself from his brain, which had been replaying his argument with Midorima in his head.

He entered the gym and surveyed it as usual. There was nobody there, and the fez Takao had jokingly placed on the fencing helmet was still where he had left it.

The punching bag proved to be a great idea, and he soon pushed everything to the back of his mind, as he focused on going through Muay Thai drills. Everyone had been surprised when he had taken up Muay Thai in his last year in high school, and they had been more surprised still when he kept it up in university. Thinking of their surprise brought on another flash of irritation, and he dialed up the intensity of his drills to counter the feeling.

It was a while before he realized someone else had arrived at the gym, and was watching him. He stopped, sweaty and aching, and turned to see Takao sitting by the fencing helmet. “That was intense,” Takao said, looking impressed. “When I’m stressed, I repeat different alphabets under my breath. I’ve got Greek, Russian, French, Hebrew, and Sanskrit under my belt. Was learning the Arabic alphabet when all this happened. Only got to ta, unfortunately. This seems to work though. Do you only use it to de-stress, or does it also help you empty yourself?”

Kise didn’t answer, watching Takao wait for an answer. The silence stretched on, neither of them breaking it. Takao kept staring at him with an expectant smile, which made him increasingly uncomfortable. 

“What do you want, Takao?” he finally asked.

Takao sighed, losing his lighthearted demeanour. “Hurting others and yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere, you know? I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me, but there’s nothing else I can say.”

“Then don’t,” Kise said quietly. He turned back to the punching bag, feeling Takao’s gaze at his back, but refused to turn around again. Eventually, he heard Takao leave. He had gotten what he wanted, which was for Takao to leave him alone, so why did he feel so dissatisfied?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: to, bus, coven, josh, cox, dimer, bis, zaxes, pow, silo, neat, wardens, gap, quay, fez, dialed, ta.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my beta!

“You think there’s a fen in this town?” Takao asked suddenly, as he, Midorima, and Kise got ready to go on their supply run for the day.

“Do you know what a fen is?” Midorima asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course I know what it is,” Takao said with a huff that Midorima took to mean that he didn’t know what a fen was.

“Okay, so I’ve got a few routes planned out for our next few runs,” Kise said as they walked out of the safehouse. “These should take us to parts of the town that we haven’t gone to before, and hopefully there will be something useful for us to bring back.”

“Yeah, we desperately need to refill the first aid kit,” Takao said, all seriousness. “Himuro’s newest injury used a large chunk of the bandages and antiseptic.”

Himuro’s newest injury was the reason they were now the only team going on supply runs. Privately, Midorima thought that Himuro was some sort of danger magnet, and that that was going to get him killed one of these days. He kept these thoughts to himself.

“Hopefully we’ll find some first aid stuff today,” Kise said. “We might have to fight some gangs though. I’m not sure what the situation is in that part of town, but we should stay alert.”

Midorima had a feeling that Kise had something else to say, and was waiting for the best opportunity to break it to them. He would have asked, but they hadn’t really talked to each other since their latest argument about Kise still going out to meet Kuroo alone. Takao now took up the task of talking to both of them to keep things from growing more awkward, but hadn’t tried to get them to talk to each other. Midorima decided that Kise would have to decide when to tell them whatever it was that he was keeping from them.

They walked in silence, Midorima mentally counting the number of people they saw out on the streets. He had started paying attention to the demographics of the remaining population, and his earlier observation that there seemed to be nobody but older teens and young adults left was supported every time.

Kise ended up taking them to a residential area on the other end of the town. Midorima had only been here once, when he’d been looking for a place to live off-campus. The houses were old and not very well maintained, and they weren’t expecting much more than canned food and a few medicines from them, considering that most of these houses were rented out to students, and not many students would be bothered to keep a well-stocked first aid kit.

“Lo and behold, the part of town with the shittier student houses,” Kise said. “We’re probably going to run into trouble here. If there are only people around our age left, this place should be teeming.”

“What if they don’t want to fight? They could just be looking for allies, you know?” Takao said.

“I’d rather not trust anyone than be dead,” Kise said.

“Okay, okay,” Takao said.

“Where are all the bodies?” Midorima asked suddenly.

“What?” Takao said.

“If there’s only a certain demographic left, where did all the others _go_? They didn’t just disappear into thin air, and the monsters didn’t eat all of them,” Midorima elaborated. This was what had been bothering him for a while now. The lack of people was one thing, but the complete lack of bodies? They had to be going somewhere.

Takao frowned. “Now that you mention it…”

“Let’s look in this house,” Kise said. He gave no indication that he had even heard Midorima. They entered the house cautiously and were greeted by a scene of chaos. The house was dirty and everything had been thrown about. They headed to the kitchen, and found some food in the cabinets, which made them think that the state of the house wasn’t because of a previous hunt for supplies. Midorima saw Kise carefully look at the rest of the house again, after they had stuffed the cans of food into their backpacks. He was frowning, but didn’t share his thoughts with them.

Midorima turned his own attention to the house again, and tried to see what Kise was seeing. He had a vague feeling that something was off about this house, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. All the things that had been thrown about didn’t look exaggerated, so it was likely that a fight _had_ occurred here. But it was a little strange that there had still been food in the kitchen, even if had only been a few cans.

After completing his second round of the house, Kise stood facing them, and said, “We’re going to start a new safe house.”

“Explain,” Takao said, crossing his arms.

“I don’t trust the Nus. They’re up to something,” he said. He held up his hand to stop Takao from speaking, and continued. “Kuroo told me that there’s definitely a cure for this virus and that it should be able to stop the progression after being bitten if it’s given before the first symptoms start appearing. He’s going to start smuggling it out and give it to me.”

Takao whistled. “Is there enough for him to safely do that though? Won’t they suspect him when it starts going missing?”

“He’s taking a risk, but he said he was being as inconspicuous as possible,” Kise said, meaning Kuroo had avoided answering the question. “So I want us to start finding people who’ve been bitten and bring them to the new safehouse to give them the cure.”

“Will we be able to get it to them before symptoms manifest though? Won’t we have to kill them if it’s too late?” Takao asked.

“Kuroo said there’s a set pattern after a bite. Nothing for a day or two, then two to three days of high fever. So if we can find people who’ve just been bitten or are fevered, we should be able to save them. Are you in?”

Midorima finally spoke. “You’re going to do it anyway, so we might as well join you and make sure you don’t get killed.”

“Yeah, we’re in,” Takao said.

“We’re not telling this to anyone else,” Kise said, and the other two nodded. “Right, let’s find a good safehouse.”

“Oh, is that why we’ve come so far from the school?” Takao guessed. Kise nodded in answer.

They moved on to the next house, and were greeted by a similar scene as before: the house looked like there had been a skirmish, but there were still some cans of food in the kitchen. Kise didn’t make another round of this house, but said it wouldn’t do as the safehouse, and moved on. This time he chose to enter a house a few streets down.

The next house didn’t look like it had been victim of a party thrown by college students, and they made their way upstairs. Midorima pushed open a door, and saw someone stretched out on the bed. Readying his knife, he edged into the room and got closer to the bed. It was a young woman, probably a year or so younger than him, and she was lying unconscious on the bed. Her lips looked dry. Tentatively, he touched her forehead and found that it was burning hot.

“She’s got a high fever,” he said. Kise approached the bed and carefully looked the girl over, finding a bite mark on the back of her shoulder. It looked infected, but that was a problem for later.

Midorima watched as Kise pulled out a small syringe, then looked at the woman, not doing anything.

“Oi, Kise. You going to do something?” Takao said.

“Kuroo said it has to be injected into the blood,” Kise said, then looked at Midorima. “Do you know how to do that?”

“I can try,” Midorima said, holding out his hand for the syringe. He had once looked up how to inject different types of drugs out of curiosity, and he hopes he remembered the angle for intravenous injections right.

“At this point, it’s either try or leave her to her fate,” Takao said. “We might as well go for it. Didn’t Kuroo tell you how it was done?”

“He’s not a doctor,” Kise answered.

“You got this, Shin-chan,” Takao said encouragingly. “Focus your qi, think of yi, and just do it.”  

 Somehow Takao’s nonsense actually helped, and Midorima took a deep breath, before kneeling next to the bed and pushing the woman’s sleeve up. He made sure there were no bubbles in the syringe, and slid it smoothly into her arm, quickly injecting it and pulling it out. Since he didn’t have alcohol swabs, he pressed her sleeve to the prick and held it there for a minute or so.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a bandage?” he asked, Kise, who rummaged one out of his backpack and handed it to him.

“Good job, Shin-chan. Hopefully that went to the right place,” Takao said. “We really need to recruit a med student or a nursing student. Since she’s already here, why don’t we make this house the new safehouse?” he added.

“We could,” Kise said, considering it. “It looks like it hasn’t been tampered with yet.”

“What are we going to do about her, then? I don’t like to leave her alone, but we can’t bring her with us or stay here with her,” Takao said.

“Do you know how long it takes to start working?” Midorima asked Kise, who shook his head. Midorima thought for a minute, then said, “Let’s leave a bottle of water and some food next to her in case she wakes up. I’m going to make a makeshift cold compress for her. We should come by tomorrow and check on her.”

“Alright,” Kise said, pulling out water and food to leave behind. Midorima tore part of the bedsheet and wet it from the bathroom, which thankfully had running water. Another strange thing about this entire situation was that most of the city still had some running water and electricity, even though all the communications with the outside were down. He placed the wet cloth on the girl’s forehead, and they left the house, noting the address for next time.

They stopped by a few more houses, and were lucky enough to find some medical supplies at one of them.

“Let’s check out one more house before we call it a day and head back,” Kise said, heading towards a house. It looked like it had also been a student house, judging from the lack of proper furniture in the living room and the state of the kitchen counters. Midorima headed upstairs, and opened a bedroom door to find a guy on the other side, and barely ducked in time to avoid the bat that was swung at him.

“Leave me alone, dammit!” the guy yelled, coming at him again, but Midorima managed to avoid his swing a second time.

“Stop!” Kise said, aiming a gun at the guy, who froze, then started laughing.

“I’ve already been bitten, just leave me alone,” he said, dropping the bat and retreating into the room.

“We can help you,” Takao said, edging past Midorima and into the room.

“Yeah? How?” the guy asked. “You got a cure?”

“Yes, actually,” Takao said. The guy gave him a tired look and sighed.

“Yeah? Where is it?”

“Right here,” Kise said, pulling out another syringe. “We’re willing to give it to you if you help us.”

“What do you want me to do? I doubt I can help you enough to earn that prized cure, which I still don’t believe you about. That could be water in a syringe for all I know,” the guy said.

“Whether or not you believe us makes no difference to us,” Kise said coldly. “We have a cure and we’re offering it to you if you want it. You can take it or leave it.”

“What would I have to do?” the guy asked, running his hand through his dark hair. Midorima spotted the bite mark on his hand.

“You’d have to come with us to another house where we’ve left someone with a fever and take care of them,” Kise said.

“Someone with a fever? What kind of fever?” he asked shrewdly.

“The kind where your temperature rises,” Kise answered flatly. The two stared at each other for a few minutes, and then the guy looked away.

“That’s it? What if I run away?” he said.

“If you run away or harm them in any way,” Kise said slowly. “I will hunt you down and kill you.” His voice was so cold that Midorima fully believed that he would do exactly that if it came to it.

“I wouldn’t test him if I were you,” Takao told the guy helpfully. “What’s your name?”

“Korrun. I go by Kor,” he replied.

“International student?” Takao asked and Kor nodded. “Okay, I’m Takao, the tall one is Midorima, and the scary one is Kise.”

“Let’s go,” Kise said, gesturing with his gun. “I’ll give you the cure after we get back to the other house.”

Kor got up shakily, and followed Kise out the door, Midorima bringing up the rear. They headed back to the house where they’d left the girl, and led him to the room. She stirred a little when they entered, and opened her eyes.

Midorima hurried to her side and helped her sit up, giving her the water. “Who are you?” she slurred.

“Friends,” Midorima said, helping her down again.

She hummed and slipped back into unconsciousness, but the fact that she had woken up at all seemed like a good sign to Midorima.

“Is this who I’m supposed to take care of?” Kor asked, looking at the girl. “What’s wrong with her?”

“What will happen to you next if we don’t give you the cure,” Kise said. Kor looked at him in alarm. “This is the last step before the bitten start changing.”

“Is she dangerous?” Kor asked.

“She’s _unconscious_ ,” Kise snapped.

“We’ve given her the cure as well, so she should recover,” Midorima said, thinking that telling Kor the truth was less likely to prompt him to attack the helpless girl. He held out his hand to Kise, who stared at Kor as he placed the syringe in it.

“I wasn’t kidding before,” Kise reminded Kor, as Midorima approached him. Kor nodded and held out his arm. Midorima pushed his sleeve up and repeated what he had done earlier.

“Are you a nursing student?” Kor asked Midorima after he was done.

Midorima shook his head. “No. Just going off what I learned from the internet.”

“What?” Kor squeaked.

“He’s the only one who knows anything about this,” Takao said. “Unless you happen to know how to do it?” Kor shook his head. “Okay, then you can’t complain.”

“One of my exes back in Germany is a nursing student,” Kor said with a sigh. “They would know. Okay, so I’ll stay here and make sure she gets some food and water in her if she wakes up. Are you going to be back soon?”

“Tomorrow,” Kise said. He handed a knife to Kor, who looked at him in surprise. “Keep it handy and use it if someone breaks in and attacks you. When we come by, we’ll knock thrice on the bedroom door.”

Kor nodded, and the three left. It was quite a long way back, and they would have to hurry if they wanted to make it back before it got dark.

“A good day’s work,” Takao said cheerfully, with a hop. “I really want a braised chicken right now,” he added wistfully.

Kise laughed humourlessly. “I’d take any type of chicken.”

“Did Kuroo say anything else? Has Kenma found anything new?” Midorima asked.

“He said something about the scientists having a shipment coming in from Cairns that should allow them to make another batch of vaccines,” Kise answered. He was leading them back via a different route than they had taken to get here. They were walking past a lake.

“I miss our weekly swims,” Takao said. “Go swimming with us when this is all over, Kise,” he added.

Kise didn’t look like he believed it _would_ end, but he nodded anyway. Takao kept up a light banter with Midorima as they walked, with most of Midorima’s attention on Kise, who seemed lost in thought.

“…ja?” Takao’s voice broke into his thoughts and looked at him.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Midorima asked.

Takao rolled his eyes. “I switched to German halfway through the conversation to see if you were listening. Clearly you weren’t. Shin-chan, are you distracted by our resident model?” he asked with a smirk, then pointed at a restaurant they were passing by. “Hey look, it says ‘la el qua.’ I wonder what the actual name of the place was.”

“Perhaps that is the original name,” Midorima said.

“There are missing letters, Shin-chan.” He yawned. “I’m so tired. Can’t wait to get some sleep to recharge myself to max wit.”

“Max wit?” Midorima asked.

“Yeah, it’s ten times what I’ve got right now.”

“Ten times zero is still zero, Takao.”

Takao clutched his heart. “Shin-chan. How could you!” he exclaimed. “For this I shall condemn you to many eves spent with me and my wit.” 

Midorima smiled a little, thinking about how welcome it would be to spend some time listening to Takao’s jokes. Perhaps when this was all over.

“We’re going to go past a stretch of forest now,” Kise said, glancing back at them. “Stay alert. We’re almost back.”

They had arrived at the area where they had fought with the monsters the day they had come to the school the first time, and Midorima tensed as he remembered that fight. He held his knife ready, and kept his eyes and ears open. Next to him, Takao did the same. Ten minutes later, they were passing the last few trees, and Midorima lowered his knife a little, relieved.

Takao did the same, and smiled at him. “I’m really glad you two are at least kind of talking to each other again, Shin-chan,” he said. “Although it could use a bit of work. I think I’ll talk to him later tonight,” he added. 

Midorima opened his mouth to respond when a dark blur emerged from the trees and attacked him. By the time Midorima registered what had happened, the monster had torn out Takao’s throat and blood Midorima was covered in his friend’s blood.

  _No, no, no, no, no,_ Midorima thought as he watched Takao fall to the ground, blood quickly pooling from his neck. A scream welled up in his throat as he rushed to his side, trying to do something, _anything,_ because Takao couldn’t die, not here, not now.

“Midorimacchi!” he thought he heard Kise yell, but it was too far away, and he could only see Takao, Takao who needed his help, who was bleeding out, gasping for breath. He had to stop the blood, or he would die, he had to do something, he could fix this, he could fix this.

“Takao, you can’t die on me, you _can’t,_ ” he said, trying to staunch the blood, but it kept pumping around his hands, which were slick with blood, with Takao’s draining life force. Tears were blurring his vision, and he couldn’t see, but he had to keep trying, he had to keep Takao alive. After an eternity, he saw that the blood had stopped flowing, and Takao was still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used in this chapter: fen, go, routes, kit, lo, dead, oi, qi, yi, prized, kor, exes, hop, braised, swims, ja, la, el, qua, max, eves.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like always, thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my lovely beta.

They were almost home safe when Kise heard Midorima’s anguished yell and turned to watch Takao fall to the ground. Yelling out at Midorima in warning, Kise took aim and shot at the monster that had gotten Takao. More of them would be coming out of the woods soon, drawn by the scent of blood and the sounds.

“Midorimacchi, we have to go now!” Kise said urgently to Midorima, who was kneeling beside Takao’s body. “We’ll have more monsters here soon.” He grabbed Midorima’s shoulder to urge him up, but he refused to move. “Midorimacchi!”

“We are _not_ leaving him here,” Midorima said, voice thick with grief.

Kise didn’t have time to argue, because a group of monsters decided to emerge from the forest at that point. A quick headcount told him there were six of them for now, with no guarantee that more wouldn’t follow in the next few minutes. For a heartbeat, he stared at them and they stared back.

Then, they lunged.

Kise shot the one closest to Midorima in the head but missed his shot at a second monster while dodging a claw swiping at him. Anger surged in him, and his only thought was to kill every monster in front of him. He had already lost Kasamatsu under his watch, and he’d be damned if he let the same thing happen to Midorima. Fury made his aim even deadlier than before, and the fight lasted a surprisingly short time.

“We need to leave right now,” he said, running his eyes over Midorima for any obvious injuries. He looked physically unscathed.

Not giving any indication that he had heard, Midorima gently picked up Takao and started to walk towards the school in silence. Kise followed close behind, keeping some distance between them, alert in case any more monsters showed up. They made it to the school in silence, and Kise knocked on the entrance so they would be let in.

“I’m glad you’re back, we were getting worried—holy shit, is he okay?” Himuro said, letting them in. Kise shook his head. “Oh, God. Do you want to lay him down in one of the classrooms?” he asked Midorima, who nodded, not saying a word, and headed down a hall.

“Go,” Kise told Himuro. “I’ll keep watch here,” he added. Himuro looked like he wanted to argue but pursed his lips and turned to follow Midorima. Kise sank down next to the door, trying to fight off unwanted memories full of blood, screams, fear, and grief rushing back at him. He had failed everyone, and he had failed himself.

He was diving deeper and deeper into dark thoughts when he heard footsteps approach. He looked up to see Murasakibara staring down at him. “Go get some rest, Kisechin. I’m taking over the watch,” he said.

Kise pushed himself off the ground, registering that it was now dark outside. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there. He nodded his thanks to Murasakibara, not finding it in himself to speak just yet. He should go find Midorima and see how he was doing. After all, he would be the most affected by what had happened today, and Kise would not let what had happened to him happen to Midorima. He didn’t have time to wallow in his own thoughts.

“Thank you, Murasakibaracchi,” he forced himself to say. He made his way upstairs to get some sleep. Exhaustion was catching up with him as the affects of adrenaline faded, and he wouldn’t be any help to anyone, especially not Midorima, if he didn’t get some rest. Everything else would have to wait.

A few hours of fitful sleep later, Kise rose and headed down to the gym, giving up on more sleep. His mind was still replaying everything that happened today, and exercise would be a welcome distraction. He walked straight to the punching bag set up in a corner of the gym and picked up the gloves he kept beside it, slipping them on.

Inhaling deeply, began throwing punches at the bag with all he had. It took a few minutes before he found his rhythm. He lost track of time, and focused all his energy and will into the punches. Only when his arms gave up on him did he stop and sink to the floor next to the wall, eyes closed. He dozed off to a miraculously dreamless sleep, only waking up when Mai climbed into his lap and started tugging at his hair. He opened his eyes and found the child staring at him with a little frown on her face.

“Sad?” she asked.

“No, Mai-chan. I’m okay,” Kise told her. He stood, picking her up. Murasakibara stood close by, observing them.

“We should bury him today,” Murasakibara said conversationally.

Kise nodded, suddenly feeling exhausted again. He still had to find Midorima and make sure he was doing okay. Or as well as he could be doing in this situation. “We should find Mai-chan some better fitting shoes. These are two sizes too big for her,” he commented, picking up the shoe that had fallen off her foot and giving it to Murasakibara.

Murasakibara hummed, letting the change in topic slide. He gave Kise a searching look, and then walked out of the gym, talking to Mai.

As Kise washed his face and brushed his teeth, he ran through everything that needed to be done. Everyone would have to be informed about Takao’s death when he got the chance. They had to bury Takao, and the sooner they did that, the better. Since Himuro was still injured and Midorima needed time to grieve, he and Murasakibara would have to go on supply runs. That would put them at a disadvantage since neither of them knew first aid, but it was what it was. Kise stared at himself in the mirror. Once upon a time, he had liked his reflection. It had changed too much, now, for him to still feel the same.

He walked out of the bathroom, and went to the rooms where the beds were, hoping to find Midorima in one. After a futile search of the classrooms, he decided to check the library. Sure enough, he found his friend sitting in a couch, staring at a book. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all last night.

“Midorimacchi, did you sleep?” he asked, even though the answer was quite obvious.

“I can’t,” Midorima said. “I can’t,” he repeated, his voice shaking. His left hand was squeezed into a fist, and the knuckles of the other hand had gone white with how hard he was clutching the book.

“Midorimacchi,” Kise said. He hated himself for not knowing how to make Midorima’s pain go away. He hated himself more for not having been able to stop it from occurring in the first place. “Midorimacchi. You have to sleep,” he said instead. Midorima shook his head, not looking at Kise. He hadn’t looked away from the book the entire time. Kise stared at him in silence for a while.

“Do you want something to help you sleep?” he finally asked. It was a dangerous offer, but he had nothing better. Midorima said nothing. Kise dug out a Ziploc bag with some pills in it, and held one out to Midorima. Midorima stared at it but made no move to take it from him. “You have to sleep, Midorimacchi. At least this way you won’t dream.”

“Or I’ll get stuck in a nightmare I can’t wake from,” Midorima said. Kise couldn’t argue with that, so he just kept his hand stretched out, the pill sitting on his palm. He was ready to wait as long as he needed to for Midorima to either take it from him or to refuse it. It was only when his arm was getting tired that Midorima unclenched his fist and picked the pill up. He stared at it, and then at Kise, who was shocked at how dead Midorima’s eyes looked. Midorima needed to grieve, but instead he was shutting down. Kise had seen the same lifeless look in his own eyes after Kasamatsu had died. He saw it every time he now looked in the mirror. The look, if allowed to set, would stay forever, and Kise could not allow that to happen to Midorima.

“Get some sleep,” he told Midorima. Midorima stared at the pill for another minute before swallowing it and getting up from the couch. He trudged out of the library, Kise a little ways behind him. Midorima got into bed and turned his back towards Kise.

Considering this to be progress, Kise went to find Murasakibara to get him to go on the supply run with him. He also needed to check on Kor and the woman they had saved yesterday.

 

“Do you need to go right now?” Himuro asked. “We should really be burying Takao.”

“We can’t bury him while Midorimacchi is sleeping,” Kise argued. “He needs to be able to say goodbye. It’ll be better if we go on a run today and get as much as we can, because supply runs are going to be difficult for the next few days.”

“He’s right, Murochin,” Murasakibara said, surprising both Kise and Himuro by taking his side. He offered no other explanation, and neither of the two demanded any from him. “This’ll make up for all the time I’ve stayed behind like a lazy bum,” he added.

“You’re more useful here,” Himuro protested.

Murasakibara sighed. “I know. Never mind, Murochin. Don’t forget to feed and change Mai-chan. I left a spare diaper with her clothes. We’re going to have to find some more.”

“Great,” Kise said. “We can probably find some in any generic store, since all the kids disappeared anyway. I doubt people have been looting stores for diapers.”

Murasakibara shrugged. “Let’s go soon so we can come back while there’s enough light out to bury Takaocchi,” he said.

“Could you make sure Midorimacchi eats something?” Kise said to Himuro, who nodded.

With that, he and Murasakibara were off. It didn’t take them long to find a store that still had some diapers on the shelves. Other useful things had already been cleaned out, which they had already been expecting. They would probably have better luck trying somewhere else or breaking into a new house. As they staked out a house that looked promising, Kise considered how much to tell Murasakibara about what he had told Midorima and Takao yesterday.

“Kisechin,” Murasakibara said, once they were sure there was no danger in the house. “You look lost in thought. That’s dangerous.”

“Sorry,” Kise said. “There’s one more thing I need to do before we can go back,” he added, quickly shoving canned food into the backpack he had brought. By some stroke of good fortune, they had also found some old water bottles and some preserved ham in the house.

“Something _you_ need to do,” Murasakibara repeated. “Are you planning on going to that place on your own?” When Kise nodded, Murasakibara frowned. “You know that’s dangerous for both of us, right? I can go with you and stand outside while you do whatever you need to do. You don’t even need to tell me what’s going on.”

Kise’s first reaction to Murasakibara’s agreeableness was suspicion and disbelief. He had to consciously remind himself that everything that had happened had changed all of them, including Murasakibara. He nodded, and then lead Murasakibara to the second base he had established yesterday. Murasakibara stood just inside the front door to keep watch, and Kise crept upstairs, gun cocked and ready.

He rapped thrice on the closed door, and waited. He had raised his fist to try again when Kor finally opened the door a crack and peered at him before opening it wider to let him in. “Didn’t think you’d come back,” Kor said.

“Told you I would, didn’t I?” Kise asked. The woman was still unconscious, but her fever seemed to be getting better, at least from what he could tell by touch. It would have been helpful to have Midorima with him for this, but it was what it was. “Did she wake up at all?”

“Yes. I gave her some water and food,” Kor replied, arms folded tightly across his chest. “I’m running out of food, though.”

“You were supposed to ration it,” Kise said. “For both of you.”

“Didn’t tell me that, did you?” Kor said.

Kise pushed Kor into the wall and pressed the gun under his chin. “Listen here,” he said, channeling all his anger into his voice. “You’d do well to remember that I don’t actually need you and I can save myself a bunch of food and water by putting a bullet through your head. Don’t give me that attitude or that bullshit again. Got it?”

Kor nodded, eyes wide and face pale. Kise removed the gun and stepped back, giving Kor a look of pure disdain and loathing.

“I’ll leave more food for you for now, and there better be some left when I come back next time,” Kise warned him, giving him some cans and water bottles.

Kor opened his mouth, and then closed it. He cleared his throat and tried again. “When will that be?” he asked.

“Whenever I feel like it,” Kise said. He would probably come back to check on the woman in two days, but Kor didn’t need to know that. “You also better make sure that she gets a good amount of food.” Kor nodded.

Kise stared at him for another few seconds and then turned to leave. He was aware that Kor had a weapon and was probably angry at him, but he couldn’t show any sign of being nervous or afraid. He left as quickly as he could without making it obvious, and then went back downstairs. Murasakibara was waiting.

“I heard a thump,” he said.

“Just a rat,” Kise said by way of explanation.

“Must’ve been a large rat,” Murasakibara said, eyebrows raised. “Should we go back, then?”

Kise nodded and they headed back. There were no attacks or unpleasant surprises on the way back this time, and they made it back safely. It was almost a disappointment, Kise thought.

“You’re back,” Himuro said, relieved. “I was starting to get worried. How far did you go?”

“Pretty far,” Kise said, hoping that Murasakibara wouldn’t bring up their detour on the way back. Himuro wouldn’t let it slide, and Kise didn’t want to get them involved in this. “Is Midorimacchi up?”

“Er…” Himuro said. “I think so? He won’t respond when I talk to him. I tried to get him to eat, but he just lay there with his back towards me.”

Kise worried his lip. “I’ll try and talk to him,” he said. Midorima was where he had left him, and he was almost certainly awake. Kise wondered if he had slept at all, despite the sleeping pill.

“Midorimacchi,” he said. “You have to eat.” Kise waited, but Midorima didn’t respond. “We have to bury Takaocchi today.” Still no response from Midorima. Kise waited for a few minutes, placed a water bottle and an open can of fruit near him, and said, “We’re going to bury him in an hour. In the back. You should come and say goodbye.”

He went to join the others, who were in another classroom. Murasakibara was reorganizing all their supplies, and Himuro was telling Mai a story. They looked up when he walked in. “I’m going to go out back and dig a grave for Takao,” he said.

“Should we burn the body instead of burying it?” Himuro asked.

Kise shook his head. “Smoke is a signal,” he said. “There have to be some tools in one of the closets that I can use to dig the grave.”

“Do you want help?” Murasakibara asked.

“No,” Kise said. “I’ll take care of it.”

He wandered around the school, looking through different closets to find something he could use as a shovel. It took a good twenty minutes before he found a shovel, and then it was time to dig a grave for Takao. He stayed as close to the building as he could, and worked quickly. It was still almost dark by the time he was done. 

“Kisechin, are you done?” Murasakibara said, walking up to him. “Should I bring him?”

“Yes,” Kise said. He waited for Murasakibara to return with the body, his eyes closed. He slowly opened them when he heard heavy steps and turned his head to find Midorima approaching him. “Midorimacchi,” he said softly. Midorima silently stopped next to him, and stared into the hole, fists clenched tightly at his sides.

Murasakibara soon returned with Takao, and put him gently down next to the grave. The three stared at the body, and then Murasakibara spoke. “How are we going to get him inside?”

“One of us will have to climb in to do it,” Kise answered, since that was their only option short of throwing Takao into the grave. He had already treated one friend with that level of disrespect; he wasn’t about to repeat it if it could be helped. “I’ll do it,” he added, jumping into the grave. He hadn’t dug it very deep because there wasn’t enough time, but it would be enough to suit their purposes. “Murasakibaracchi, can you lower him down?”

As Murasakibara picked up the body, Midorima also joined Kise in the grave. Kise didn’t say anything, since he didn’t think he would get a response. Together, the two gently placed the body on the ground, and then Kise climbed back out of the grave. Midorima followed after a few minutes, still silent, and headed back inside without looking at either of them. Kise sighed and started shovelling dirt into the grave.

“Kisechin,” Murasakibara said, holding out his hand. Kise stared at him with eyebrows furrowed before he understood and handed over the shovel. “You should talk to Midochin,” Murasakibara added, starting to shovel in the dirt. He paused and looked at the shovel. “This is a really nice shovel. The handle looks like oak. We should keep it. It could be a very useful weapon.” 

Kise nodded, not bothering to reply to the random pronouncement. Murasakibara was in charge of keeping inventory, so he would add the shovel to it. He was right about Kise needing to talk to Midorima. He was sure Midorima hadn’t gotten any sleep last night, and possibly hadn’t eaten anything either.

When he headed back, he saw Himuro playing with Mai, trying to keep her entertained as she got increasingly cranky with sleep. Himuro looked up at him and gave him a sad smile. “Sorry I didn’t come to help. I’ve been trying to get her to sleep but she isn’t cooperating today.”

“That’s weird,” Kise commented. Mai was usually quite agreeable when it came to being put to bed.

“I think she got her hands on a stimulant somehow, and chewed it. Dex, maybe,” Himuro said. “I’ve moved all the medicines and now they’re all decidedly out of her reach.” 

Kise nodded, and went to look for Midorima. He found him lying down, facing the wall again. He didn’t think Midroima was sleeping, but he didn’t want to risk waking him up if he was. He needed sleep, and he also needed to mourn. Kise would talk to him tomorrow, before going out to the house. He was also meeting Kuroo tomorrow to exchange information and to hopefully get some more vaccines.

Sleep was a little more forthcoming that night, and he actually felt rested after waking up to the beeps of the assortment of alarm clocks they had collected. Being rested was a good thing, since he always needed to keep all his wits about him when making contact with Kuroo in person. If either of them got caught, it would blow the entire operation and would probably end up with at least one of them being killed.  

He was tucking his gun away when Midorima walked up to him. “I’m going with you,” Midorima said, jaw set and arms crossed across his chest.

“Okay,” Kise said, handing him a gun. He wasn’t sure this was a great idea, but maybe this would provide a good distraction for Midorima and prevent him from falling deeper into the spiral of his woe. It was worth a try, in any case, and it was always good to have backup when going out.

They stopped first at the house to make sure Kor was still alive and hadn’t eaten all the rations Kise had left him. The woman seemed to be doing better, but was still in a deep sleep. Kor reported that she had woken and held a short conversation with him earlier, but that he hadn’t gotten anything too useful from her. All he could tell Kise was that her name was Yuna and she had been out looking for food when she was attacked. Kise left him with another stern reminder to make sure he didn’t eat too much before Kise returned.

The next thing to do was to head to the meeting place he and Kuroo had agreed on. They had decided to meet at a different place each time, and had come up with the locations early on. Kise and Midorima got to the rendezvous point first. Midorima stayed behind to keep watch while Kise went inside the house. He quickly examined the house for any telltale signs of being bugged, but couldn’t find anything. He was just examining the cover of a book titled _The Murder at the Dells_ when Kuroo joined him. He didn’t look any worse for wear, except for some dark circles, which was a good sign.

“Midorima looks…strange. Did something happen?” Kuroo asked Kise in lieu of a greeting.

“Takao was killed during a fight with monsters,” Kise said.

“Shit,” Kuroo said. “That sucks. I liked him,” he added.

“Do you have any updates?” Kise asked, not wanting to dwell on Takao’s death for too long. Kuroo seemed to understand that, because he complied with the change in topic.

“Ya. Kenma thinks he’s discovered a record of all the houses that are bugged in the area, and he’s confident he can get into the system given enough time. He was also saying something about a vox, and about some SI unit, but I have no idea what he meant, so I can’t tell you much more about that,” Kuroo said, running a hand through his messy hair.

“What about more vaccines?” Kise asked.

“I could only smuggle out one more for now,” Kuroo said. “I don’t think they suspect anything yet, but I still want to be very careful. I heard something about a Project Foe—or maybe it’s Project Joe—but I’m not sure what it is. It sounds important, though, so I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”

“Heard anything from Oikawa or Iwaizumi?” Kise asked.

Kuroo shook his head. “They’ve been assigned to some other part of the lab, I’m assuming. There’s been absolutely no sign of either of them since we all split up. Once a month they do this ‘internal exchange’ where people are assigned to different areas of the lab based on votes. I’ll try to get into a new area and gather some more information. What about word from Kuroko and Kagami?”

Kise shook his head. “Nothing. It’s not that surprising, though. Their stuff is expected to take the most time. I’m not worried just yet.”

“That’s good, then. I should head back soon. I told my colleagues I was stepping out for a quick walk because I needed fresh air. Stay safe, okay?”

“You too,” Kise said, and carefully put the vial and syringe Kuroo gave him into his pocket. He was about to ask Kuroo something when shots erupted from outside the house and Kise’s heart stuttered to a stop. He ran to a window and looked down at Midorima shooting at monsters. The way Midorima was moving made Kise’s blood run cold. There was a very familiar recklessness in his manner, and he looked like he didn’t care if he got hurt or killed in this fight.

Kise quickly pulled out his gun and tried to line up a shot from the window, but there was too much movement for him to be certain that he wouldn’t hit Midorima by mistake. Cursing, he ran downstairs to help, ignoring Kuroo’s shouts at him to stop.

“Midorimacchi!” he shouted in warning, taking aim at one of the monsters and pulling the trigger. The bullet buried itself in the monster’s head and the monster crumpled. More monsters were emerging and joining the fray. Kise knew he didn’t have enough bullets to kill all of them, and he also knew that Midorima was only carrying one gun and would run out of bullets first.

He killed another monster and glanced over at Midorima, who had lunged at a monster, brandishing the gun like a club instead. He had already run out of bullets. Kise quickly took aim and shot at the monster before its claws could reach Midorima.

“Midorimacchi, stop! Run inside!” he yelled, bringing out his second gun. He had wasted too many bullets on non-lethal shots. Midorima didn’t listen, and moved to attack another monster without a real weapon at his disposal. “Midorimacchi!” Kise yelled again, to no avail.

“Both of you, close your eyes, NOW!” Kuroo yelled as something sailed over them in an arc and hit the ground. Kise barely had time to close his eyes before a blinding light flared up and seared his eyeballs through his eyelids. The monsters started screaming in agony around him, but Kise didn’t dare open his eyes yet.

The screams died down, and Kise cautiously opened his eyes, blinking against the afterimage of the light. All the monsters were on the ground, with liquid oozing out of their eyes, which seemed to have melted. For the first time in a long time, Kise found himself looking at a scene that made him want to throw up.

“What the hell was that?” he asked Kuroo, who had also joined him and Midorima.

“Some sort of flash bomb the scientists at the lab gave me just in case I ran into monsters on my ‘walk.’ I’m not sure what exactly it’s made of. I couldn’t ask them then, but it should be okay now, since I had to use it,” Kuroo answered. “I really should head back,” he added. “Stay safe,” he said, looking right at Midorima, who didn’t seem to be listening at all. Kise nodded and watched Kuroo jog quickly away.

“Let’s go,” Kise said to Midorima. He had learned important things today, and he needed to think them over to decide on the best course of action. They walked back in silence, but it was a heavy kind of silence. Kise knew he would have to do something soon, to nip Midorima’s newly developed self-destructiveness in the bud. They couldn’t risk losing another member of the team, and Kise couldn’t risk losing Midorima. He led them back to the school as fast as he could, not wanting to run into any more monsters without a lot of ammunition left. Midorima didn’t say a word the entire time, and walked away as soon as they were safely inside the school.

Kise also headed up to get some sleep. The adrenaline from the fight was dissipating and exhaustion was setting in. He needed to eat something before he crashed. He went to the supply room and found Murasakibara counting everything again. He wondered how many times Murasakibara had done that already. If they ever got out of this mess alive, they were all going to need a lot of therapy.

“Here,” Mursakibara said, tossing an energy bar at him. Kise unwrapped and ate it without complaint. “Kisechin,” Murasakibara began, and then paused.

“What?” Kise asked, having waited a while for Murasakibara to continue.

“I want to bake cookies,” Murasakibara finally said. Kise got the feeling that wasn’t what he had wanted to say initially.

“You’re turning into a granny, Murasakibaracchi. You’re too young for that,” Kise said.

Murasakibara shrugged. “We’re going to die before we get to the right age for that.”

Kise didn’t have an answer for that. He would have liked to refute the pronouncement, but couldn’t bring himself to make false promises. Murasakibara wouldn’t believe him anyway. False promises were better saved for people like Kuroko.

He nodded to Murasakibara, finished his energy bar and headed to bed.

 

It felt like he had just gone to bed when he was shaken roughly awake by Himuro. “Kise! Midorima went out by himself,” Himuro said urgently, causing Kise to snap awake and swear.

“What’s he _thinking,_ ” Kise said, more to himself than to Himuro. “I’m going after him.”

“You don’t know where he’s gone. He could be anywhere,” Himuro objected.

“Why did you wake me up, then?” Kise asked.

“I don’t know,” Himuro said, running a hand through his hair with a defeated sigh. “I guess it seemed like something you should know as soon as possible.”

“Well, now I know, and I’m going to try to look for him. Hopefully he hasn’t gone far. When did he leave?” Kise asked, quickly grabbing weapons to take with him.

“A few minutes ago. Shouldn’t have gotten too far,” Himuro said.

Kise nodded and ran down the stairs. As he exited, he heard Murasakibara call out his name, and looked up at the second floor. Murasakibara leaned out a window, pointed, and said, “He went that way.”

Kise jogged down the direction Murasakibara had pointed out, making sure not to run too fast and exhaust himself. Thankfully, Midorima hadn’t decided to sneak out in the dark, which meant he wasn’t totally self-destructive right now. It didn’t take too long for him to spot him on the path, walking like a man on a mission. Kise didn’t run to catch up with him, but remained at a distance that would allow him to help if Midorima needed it.

Midorima walked all the way to some former student residences and stopped at one of them. Kise wondered if this was where he had lived before all of this had gone down. Midorima went inside the house. Kise waited outside, not wanting to intrude, and also not wanting to explore the area for fear that Midorima might need his help.

Thirty minutes passed, and he started to get worried. There might have been unfriendly people in the house. Midorima could be in trouble. Cautiously, he entered the house, on the alert for any suspicious sounds. The house was silent, and seemed to be deserted. It was messy in the way only student houses were, and it was hard to tell if it had always been like this or if people had looted it after the apocalypse.

Carefully, Kise checked the rooms on the lower level before going upstairs. He gently pushed open a bedroom door, keeping his gun trained, and saw Midorima sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. Midorima hadn’t reacted at all to him entering the room, and didn’t react now as Kise moved towards him.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Kise asked, lowering his gun to his side. Midorima looked up at him. “ _Why_ are you trying to get yourself killed?” Kise demanded.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Midorima said. Kise’s hand tightened around the gun, and the other curled up in a fist.

“ _I_ wouldn’t understand?” he said, letting his anger bubble over. “I lost friends to this hell; I lost Kasamatsu-senpai. I lost _my sisters._ Don’t give me that bullshit about not understanding. What about your sister? Didn’t you want to find her?”

Midorima said nothing, but the pain in his face pierced through Kise’s heart. He tried to soften his tone. “I understand too much, Midorimacchi. I know you’re hurting,” he said. “But you can’t just throw your life away.”

“I haven’t been able to sleep. I can’t stop replaying how he died,” Midorima said, hands curled into fists on his thighs. Kise moved towards him and gently pulled him in an embrace, Midorima’s head against his chest.

“I can’t forget it,” Midorima said, voice choked.

“I know,” Kise whispered. He wanted to tell Midorima it got better. But he didn’t know if it did. It hadn’t gotten better for him yet. So he just held Midorima, who was now crying, and tried to provide comfort by being there. “I was in the same position as you, you know?” he began, not knowing what else to do. He hadn’t had anyone to lean on in the aftermath of Kasamatsu’s death, which was all the more reason for him to try to be there for Midorima. “When senpai died, I didn’t really want to live. I had already lost my sisters. Senpai was such a comfort when I was dealing with that grief. But when he died, I felt like I was alone in the world. Suddenly, there was nobody who could give me any type of support. Instead, I was left with a small child to take care of. It was so hard. I thought of giving up, many times.”

He paused. Midorima’s sobs had quieted down, but he had made no move to extricate himself from Kise, so Kise held on and continued. “But every time I reached the edge of the cliff, the thought of what my sisters and senpai would have wanted kept me from falling off. They wouldn’t have wanted me to give up. Senpai would’ve kicked my ass if I’d said anything like that when he was alive.” That drew a watery chuckle from Midorima.

“So I decided that I would do everything I could to keep Mai-chan and anyone else I could find safe. As cheesy as it sounds, it was that goal that kept me going,” Kise finished. He didn’t add that sometimes even that wasn’t enough, and he had to distract himself through exhaustion to stop himself from doing something drastic. There were people who relied on him, and him showing any weakness would only lower their morale. He had to stay strong so the others could remain sane.

“And does it?” Midorima asked, pulling away and looking into Kise’s eyes with his bloodshot ones. “Keep you going?”

“I’m still alive,” Kise said with a shrug, trying to keep his tone light. “Don’t give up, Midorimacchi. We can get out of this alive.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Midorima said, looking at his lap.

“Midorimacchi,” Kise said, and waited until Midorima looked at him. “Promise me you’ll try. And if you feel like you can’t, promise me you’ll let me know.”

Maybe it was something in his face that did the trick, because Midorima nodded at length. Kise felt relieved that Midorima hadn’t completely shut down just yet, and was willing to listen to him. He’d have to keep a close eye on him for the next few days.

“If Takao was here, he’d make some joke about ki right now,” Midorima said with a sad smile. “I’m sorry I worried you, Kise.”

“Let’s go back before someone finds us here. This seems like a place where a lot of people might be hiding out. I really don’t want to kill people today,” Kise said, holding out his hand. Midorima let him pull him to his feet, and followed him down the stairs. There was nothing useful in the house for them to take except some toilet paper, which they stuffed in a garbage bag and headed back to the school.

Murasakibara and Himuro were very relieved to have them both back safe. Midorima went to lie down, and Kise convinced him to take a sleeping pill to help him sleep before going down to the gym. Talking about Kasamatsu and his sisters had brought up memories he didn’t really want to think about right now, and exercise was the best distraction in this place. Pretending to be stronger than he was took a heavy toll on him, and he could only hope that he would be able to hold himself together for a while longer.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: had, dells, ham, bum, if, foe, beeps, spare, granny, er, arc, his, sizes, si, votes, joe, vox, we, woe, dex, not, ya, ki, oak


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out!

Before Midorima knew it, Takao had been two months dead and things had gone more or less back to how they had been before his death. Sometimes he would still turn around expectantly and then remember that his friend was buried in the dirt outside the school. Those moments were sobering, but he no longer got overwhelmed by them. He and Kise were the only ones who went out on supply runs, because Kise still hadn’t told Murasakibara and Himuro about the other safe house, which was now populated with six people they had rescued over the last two months.

Kuroo had been able to smuggle out vaccines intermittently, and they had been able to save a couple more people who had been bitten. Some of them had even recovered enough to aid supply runs to stock the other safe house. Midorima wasn’t sure what Kise planned to do with those people, exactly, but he trusted that Kise would tell him in time.

He and Kise had stopped in a third house they had staked out and decided on as a safe house for when they ventured out too far from the school to make it back before dark. He was about to lie down and catch some sleep when he heard what sounded like a phone vibrating. Kise dug into his pack and pulled out what was indeed a phone vibrating.

Curious, Midorima approached Kise as he answered the phone. Midorima resigned himself to only being able to hear half the conversation. It was unfortunate that they couldn’t have video calls. He observed Kise’s expression, which turned increasingly grim as the call went on. He mostly just listened to whoever was on the other end—Kuroo, most likely—and only asked for clarification a couple of times.

When the call finally ended, Kise’s face was pale and his eyebrows were drawn. He sat on the bed and stared at the phone, fiddling with his earring. Midorima let him be for a few minutes, and then gave in. “Who was it?” he asked.

Kise looked up at him, as if he had just remembered that Midorima was still in the room. “Kuroo. Kenma’s made some very interesting discoveries. Kuroo’s going to meet us in person tomorrow to explain because he didn’t want to stay on the phone for too long.”

“What kind of discoveries?” Midorima asked.

“About the virus and what’s going on in the lab. It’s all planned, and I’m not surprised,” Kise said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything concrete except that we shouldn’t trust anybody.”

“We’ll just have to wait for him to tell us in person, then,” Midorima said, even though he was starting to come up with all sorts of theories based on the minimal information Kise had given him. Maybe it would have been better to not have asked, because his brain was probably not going to let him rest much tonight.

“Sleep, Midorimacchi,” Kise said. “I’ll take first watch.”

“I won’t be able to sleep yet,” Midorima said with a shrug. “You go first. You look tired.”

“I really need to find some concealer for my eyebags,” Kise said. It took Midorima a few seconds to realize that Kise had just made a joke. But underneath the throwaway comment, Midorima thought there was some lingering longing for life before the apocalypse. “Okay, I’ll sleep first,” Kise added. Midorima nodded and positioned himself near the window so he could keep an eye on the entrance. They had rigged a simple trap on the back door so it would make noise if someone tried to enter through there. So far, it hadn’t been deployed.

To pass the time, Midorima started naming the elements of the periodic table, something Kuroo had suggested once, since some of the techniques he had used with Takao were still too painful to use. He liked to recite them by chemical symbol instead of the name, because it tended to work best to keep him calm. He had gotten to Os when he saw a dark shape walking down the street. It was definitely a human, based on the shape and gait, and it was a human on a mission. They didn’t look around, and just kept walking really fast. Midorima thought they were carrying a rather large weapon, but he couldn’t tell for sure. He kept an eye on the figure for as long as they stayed within his field of vision. Most people walked quickly when they were outside, but very few people were ever out after dark. He wondered who that had been and why they had been outside.

The figure hadn’t come back by the time he shook Kise gently awake, and he decided that they probably hadn’t been important. Kise exchanged positions with him, and Midorima climbed into the still-warm bed. It even smelled fairly nice, he thought sleepily, marvelling at how Kise still managed to keep himself put-together. Kise would probably look like a model even if the world was literally in flames.

After a dreamless sleep, Midorima woke up feeling fairly rested and ready to face whatever the universe had to throw at him that day. He brushed his teeth with the cup of water Kise had left for him, and then went to the room next door, where they stashed all of their supplies in this house.

“Morning,” Kise greeted, holding out a tin of biscuits. “We have to meet Kuroo in an hour, so we should head out soon.”

Midorima nodded and nibbled on one of the biscuits. They were dry and didn’t taste very pleasant, but food was food, and they would take what they could get. The past couple of times, Kuroo had managed to direct them to houses where Kenma had disabled the bugs so they could take the food, so they had actually been lucky enough to be eating fairly well.

It didn’t take them long to get to the rendezvous point, so they decided to circle around until Kuroo arrived. It would look suspicious if they stayed in one place for too long and got discovered. There was a nearly-empty convenience store nearby, and they strolled around it for anything that could be potentially useful to them. Most of the shelves were completely bare, and broken glass littered the floor, punctuated by spilled sauces and condiments that had dried out and were growing moldy. In an out-of-the-way corner of the store, Midorima discovered a hefty candlestick that looked like it was made of brass. Figuring it could be a useful weapon, he stuffed it in his backpack.

“Let’s head back to the meeting place, Midorimacchi,” Kise said.

Kuroo was waiting for them, arms crossed and fingers tapping his biceps. Midorima stood near the door so he could keep watch while Kuroo told them whatever he needed to tell them.

“So, what’s the news?” Kise asked.

Kuroo unfolded his arms and ran a hand through his hair. “Kenma got into those locked files and found out that these two people called The Conte are heads of this entire operation concerning the virus.”

“Conte as in the plural of count?” Midorima asked. As far as codenames went, this was quite an interesting one to choose.

“I don’t know what it means, but you’re probably right,” Kuroo answered. “Anyway, he did some more digging and found out that Eri and Yuri are The Conte. They were double crossing us by pretending to double cross the scientists.”

“I’m honestly not even surprised,” Kise said. “What else?”

“They’re trying to recruit healthy young adults to test a newly engineered version of the virus on. They’re trying to perfect it,” Kuroo said.

“Into what?” Kise asked.

“Into something that will let them have control over whoever’s infected, basically. They want to create zombies.”

“And that’s why they released the virus when there were a lot of young adults in the town,” Midorima said. Kuroo nodded.

“Exactly. I don’t know what we should do about this new information. I’m really worried that they’ll find out that Kenma found all of this out,” Kuroo said. “I’m not a hundred percent sure of where they keep the people they want to test the virus on, but I think I have a good idea. If I wasn’t afraid of all sorts of alarms starting to blare and give me away, I would explore the lab.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Kise told him. He tapped his gun against his thigh. “Did Kenma find anything else?”

“Not yet, I don’t think. He said there are other files he’s working on cracking but that it may take some more time because of something about an erg? I have no idea what that means but I’ll let you know when he finds something new,” Kuroo said. “Wait, I just remembered—if you see a fox, be very careful. They tested the virus on foxes before moving on to humans, so there are infected foxes walking around the area.”

“Okay,” Kise said. “Good to know. I wonder if there’s something in the school that could shed some light into this as well. We haven’t seen Eri and Yuri since we all split up, and I want to know where they are.”

“I’m pretty sure they come by the school occasionally,” Midorima said. “I’ve heard Himuro mention them dropping by sometimes. Mostly when we’re not around.”

“I see,” Kise said slowly.

“Oh, and here,” Kuroo said, digging into his pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “These are some of the passwords that were on the locked files. Kenma thought they could come in handy. If you find a computer in the school that they’ve been using, try these out.”

Kise nodded and tucked the paper in his own pocket. “We should all head back now. There’s a lot to think about. Does Kenma think he can get more information if he keeps at it?”

“He’s pretty confident, from what I can tell,” Kuroo said.

“Okay,” Kise said. “Then it’s probably worthwhile to let him continue. Run at the first sign of danger, okay?”

“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not noble enough to die for this cause,” Kuroo said. “You should take that advice too. I don’t know if it’s a great idea to just stay in the school. Maybe you should explore a bit and have another safe place ready in case you need to get out.”

“Are there cameras in the school?” Midorima suddenly asked. The other two looked at him. “I can’t remember. Are there cameras?”

“I think so?” Kise said with a frown.

“You want to be very careful if there are,” Kuroo said. “Maybe disable them first, somehow.”

“We will figure something out,” Kise said. Midorima could tell he was already planning what to do once they got back to the school. He also vaguely registered the sound of rain coming from outside. They hadn’t brought umbrellas and were going to get soaked by the time they got back.

“Oh, shit, it’s started to rain,” Kuroo said. “Didn’t bring an umbrella.”

“Are you going to get in trouble if they find out you went out?” Midorima asked.

Kuroo shook his head. “No. I told them I was going to the zen garden. It’ll be fine. I’ve found that I’m pretty good at bullshitting my way through situations.”

“Let’s hope your confidence in your own wit doesn’t get you in trouble this time,” Midorima commented.

“Let’s head back, Midorimacchi,” Kise said. “I really want to explore the school now. Be careful,” he added, the last part addressed to Kuroo.

“Ay, captain,” Kuroo said with a smirk. It was remarkable that he could still joke around as easily as he did, Midorima thought. He and Kise left first, stepping out into the rain. It wasn’t very heavy, but it was a long way to the school and they were both thoroughly soaked by the time they stepped into the shelter of the building.

“Welcome back,” Himuro greeted them after they had trudged upstairs to the classroom. “This is a sight. Midorima, I just realized how long your eyelashes are. The rain is clinging to them like dew.” 

Midorima stopped wiping the rain off his glasses and looked up. He wasn’t sure how to respond to Himuro. “Thanks?” he said belatedly, as the silence stretched into awkwardness.

“You should both change before you get sick,” Himuro continued, without missing a beat. Midorima had the crazy thought that he had imagined the last part of the exchange.

Since that was very sound advice, they went to the supply room to do just that. Kise dug into a box labeled “Za Pizzeria” for clean clothes and tossed a bundle of clothing at Midorima. Grateful to be able to get out of the soaking clothes, Midorima quickly changed and dropped the wet clothes in a corner. It would be better to wring them out, he supposed, but that could wait for later.

“There aren’t any cameras in this room, at least,” Kise said, carefully examining the room. “Could you check the hallways for cameras? I’m going to go talk to Himuro and Murasakibaracchi about Eri and Yuri’s visits.”

“Got it,” Midorima said, and slipped into the hallway. He walked the length of the hallway, keeping his eyes trained for any cameras, but didn’t see any. The other hallways yielded the same result. This was good news for them, because it meant they weren’t being monitored while they were in the school. Probably because Eri and Yuri wanted to appear trustworthy to them. Even though nobody would probably question the existence of cameras in a school.

As he walked down the halls, he wondered if any of the rooms were bugged like the bugged houses they had been to. They didn’t normally discuss too much sensitive information at the school, but Midorima had attributed that to Kise’s reluctance to share everything with Himuro and Murasakibara. But maybe he also didn’t like discussing things in the school because he feared it was bugged.

Midorima started examining rooms and hallways more carefully, but the search didn’t yield any hidden cameras that he could find. Thinking that that probably meant that the school wasn’t bugged, he headed back to where everyone else was. He hadn’t checked the entire school; only the places they regularly visited, which was mainly just a few classrooms on the first floor of the west side of the school, as well as the gym and the toilets. It was a large school, and they didn’t really need all of the other space. It was supposed to have been useful for other recruits for the Nus, but there hadn’t been any. Kuroko and Kagami were taking a very long time convincing more people to join in.

“Midorimacchi,” Kise said, startling Midorima into turning around. He hadn’t even realized that someone was behind him. If Kise had been an enemy, Midorima would probably be dead. “Anything?”

Midorima shook his head.

“That’s a good thing, I guess,” Kise said. Midorima got the feeling he wasn’t really talking to him.

“What did Himuro-san say?” Midorima asked.

“He said they do visit sometimes, and say hi when they do. But he also said they typically come to do something else and visiting the three of them is just an afterthought from what he can tell. And he mentioned that he hasn’t seen them for a few weeks,” Kise answered. “I think,” he started, and then paused, tilting his head, looking down the hall. Midorima waited. Eventually, Kise looked up at him and continued, “I’m going to search the school to see if there’s anything useful for us here.”

“I’ll come with you,” Midorima said reflexively. Kise frowned at him.

“I’ll be inside the school, Midorimacchi. You don’t need to come with me,” he said. “I’ll tell you if I find something.” 

Midorima didn’t know how to put his unease into words, and his chance to do so disappeared because Kise evidently took his silence as agreement and strolled off. Midorima stared after him for a few seconds and then reluctantly headed to the gym to exercise.

 

Kise’s plan was to explore the parts of the school they didn’t use. Even if he didn’t find anything incriminating against Eri and Yuri, there was a chance he would find something that would be useful for them in general. There was always value in gaining knowledge. He smiled wryly at himself as this thought passed through his head. He had never been one for the pursuit of knowledge. The apocalypse changed people.

The school was relatively untouched by the chaos that surrounded everyone these days. All the furniture seemed to be in place, and was in as good of a condition as school furniture could be expected to be in. He looked into each room he passed, to make sure he didn’t miss anything that could be useful or important.

His search revealed nothing at all until he made it to the furthest edge of the east wing on the third floor. That part of the school held club rooms and the student council room. He closed the door to the Model UN club room and took a few steps to the student council room.

The knob wouldn’t turn. He tried forcing the door open, thinking it was jammed, but the door didn’t budge. He realized that the door wasn’t jammed, but locked instead. If this was Eri and Yuri’s doing, they would have the key to the door with them.

He tried to shoulder the door open once more, hoping that it would give this time, but it still held fast. Since he wasn’t going to get Midorima or Murasakibara involved in this until he knew it wouldn’t put them in danger, he decided against asking them for help with the door. There had to be some way to open it without the key. Schoolroom locks were never very sturdy. Or maybe there was another key in the school somewhere.

He wondered if the janitor’s closet held a master key for the rooms in the school, or if there was a set of keys in the administrative office downstairs. There was a janitor’s closet on the second floor, so he decided to check in there first.

There was a drawer labeled ‘keys’ in the closet but it was empty. Pinning his hope on a set of keys in the main office, he headed back to the first floor to look. As luck would have it, he found the master key in a drawer that had been jammed until he had pulled aggressively at it. He made his way back upstairs with his newly acquired key and tried it on the locked door. The lock clicked and the door swung open.

The room was decked out like an office that was regularly used. There was a desktop, a laptop, and many files and folders stacked on the desks. Kise scanned the room for any obvious signs of being watched before cautiously stepping in to examine the computers and the files. Both the laptop and desktop were off, and he didn’t want to risk leaving a mark of his presence by turning them on, so he left them alone and made for the files instead. They were arranged in neat piles. He chose the stack closest to him, picked up the topmost file, and flipped it open.

It looked like an inventory, with each folder containing a different category of supplies. It could be very useful, but it wasn’t incriminating anyone. He put the file back and moved to the next stack. This file contained a list of addresses. It was just a list of addresses, with nothing else to help him identify what the list was for. The file went back onto its pile.

The next file contained a list of names, some crossed out, some starred, and some with question marks next to them. Again, the symbols didn’t mean anything to Kise. He supposed the crossed out names could represent dead people, and the ones with question marks might be missing, but he had no idea what the stars could mean. The next file on the pile was a lot thicker than the one he was currently perusing, so instead of moving to the next stack, he picked it up and opened it. Inside was what looked like a profile of a young adult around his age. He flipped through the file and found that it contained profiles of several people, all of them between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. This was more damning in his opinion, but the file didn’t say anywhere what it was for.

He started reading one of the profiles. Each of them contained a picture, basic information about the person, and a notes section. The profiles were not very detailed, but they were either starred or had question marks next to the name, just like the ones in the previous file. He got the feeling that all these profiles belonged to the people in the other file.

The next file was much thinner, but also contained profiles. The first one was for someone called Jua, and had a thick red cross through it. He flipped to the next profile, which was for a Victor who went by Vee. This profile was also crossed out. Kise frowned at the picture, which looked familiar. Memories of a body came to him, and he remembered the guy he and Midorima had found dead in a house. So the crosses probably meant these were profiles of dead people. He flipped through the rest of the file and with a sinking heart, stopped at a very familiar picture. Kuroko’s impassive face stared back at him through the picture, and he was very aware of the red cross on the page.

If this was a file of dead people, it meant Kuroko was dead. He flipped through the rest of the file and his heart sank when he found Kagami’s profile, also with a giant red cross through it. He hoped he was wrong, but something told him he wasn’t, and that his friends were both dead, and possibly had been dead for quite a while.

Shaken but not done yet, he picked up another file that had what looked like some sort of quota for recruitment of new members. The final file he examined contained more profiles, these also of familiar people. He saw his own profile, and wondered what it was being kept for. Putting everything back the way it was before, he decided to call it a day and head back. 

He locked the door behind him and tucked the key in his pocket, his hand brushing against the passwords Kenma had sent. The crinkle of the paper gave him pause, and he looked at the computers in contemplation. Finally, he pulled out the paper from his pocket and turned the desktop computer on.

It booted up quickly, and the screen asked for a password. He looked at the piece of paper and typed in the first thing on it. It didn’t work, and he tried the second password, which also didn’t work.

“Third time’s the charm,” he muttered to himself, typing another potential password in. “What do you know,” he said, waiting for the screen to finish loading. He clicked around, looking for things that might be useful. He found folders with the same information as the files he had just looked at. He dug around a little more but didn’t come across anything interesting or incriminating until he clicked into a document that contained his and his friends’ profiles. They were very similar to the ones in the file but were even more detailed. His profile contained information about what he studied in college, his family members and how they had died, and most disturbingly, listed his friends as people important to him. 

There were similar profiles on Kuroo, Kenma, Himuro, Murasakibara, Oikawa, and Iwaizumi. The only ones missing were Kuroko and Kagami. After he was done reading the profiles, he shut down the computer and tucked the paper back into his pocket and returned to the other end of the school. He was now really worried about Kuroko and Kagami. Eri and Yuri would have questions to answer when he saw them next. In the meantime, he had to prepare for the possibility that Kuroko and Kagami were really dead. Mind whirring, he made his way to the gym, where Midorima was shooting some baskets.

“You’re back,” Midorima said, turning towards him. “Find anything?”

“Not really,” Kise said. “I wonder when Eri and Yuri are coming next. I want to talk to them.”

Midorima adjusted his glasses. One of the lenses had a crack in the corner. Kise idly wondered when that had happened. “About what?”

Kise shrugged. “Just how everyone’s doing on their respective assignments,” he said easily. “They probably know more about it than anyone.”

Midorima inclined his head in agreement. “Do you want to have a little one-on-one?” he asked Kise, raising the ball in his hand.

“Sure,” Kise said, stripping off his shirt. He caught Midorima staring and raised an eyebrow. “Eyes up here, Midorimacchi,” he said drily. “I don’t want this shirt to smell like sweat. There aren’t a lot of clean ones left.”

“Oh,” Midorima said, averting his eyes.

“Okay, whenever you’re ready,” Kise said, slightly amused. “I’m going to beat you.”

“You wish,” Midorima huffed. “Your shots won’t beat my three-pointers.”

 

Two days later, the universe gave Kise a chance to question Eri and Yuri when they showed up with a bag of food instead of just sneaking around as they had apparently been doing. Kise sat a little distance away as Himuro talked to them. Or he talked to Eri while Yuri stared unnervingly at Kise. Kise stared back, feeling like this was a test he couldn’t afford to fail.

Eri and Himuro eventually finished talking, and then Yuri and Eri walked over to Kise as Himuro left the room to give the supplies to Murasakibara. To say hi, probably. “How are you, Kise?” Eri asked.

“Still looking good, ne?” Yuri said.

“I try,” Kise said, choosing to ignore Eri’s question. “Do you have any information about the others?” he asked her.

Eri tilted her head. “Yes. They’re all doing well.”

“Really? Are we going to hear from them soon?” Kise asked.

“Possibly,” Eri replied.

Kise hummed. “How are Kuroko and Kagami doing on their mission?” 

Eri’s head tilt became more pronounced.

“Perfectly fine. They’re at the quays these days,” Yuri said. 

“Yeah? Helping the fish as fish food?” Kise asked through clenched teeth. Yuri’s tone had basically confirmed that they were dead, and that meant he had failed to keep his friends safe. _Again._ He had failed to keep people safe again. Unbidden, the memories of Kasamatsu and Takao’s deaths flooded back. 

Eri and Yuri stared at him in silence, and then a slow smile spread on Yuri’s face. “Smart boy,” she said.

“Be careful,” Eri purred. The menace in her tone sent a chill down Kise’s spine, but he maintained eye contact. Eri turned around abruptly and walked out. Yuri stared at him for a few more seconds and then followed Eri.

Kise stayed sitting, replaying Eri’s words, and his friends deaths in his mind, over and over again. Blood and failure, and a ominous whisper telling him to be careful. 

 

Deciding that he had exercised enough, Midorima exited the gym and headed back upstairs, and ran into Eri and Yuri on the staircase.

“Oh, hello,” Eri said with a smile. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Hello,” Midorima said. He looked at them and stifled the urge to squirm and get away from them.

“We would love to chat, but we have to leave,” Eri said. “We will see you soon.” She smiled again, and the two continued on their way downstairs. Midorima stared after them, trying to make sense of the exchange. Shaking away his unease, he walked into the classroom to find Kise alone in the room, laughing hysterically.

“Are you okay?” Midorima asked.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Kise said.

“You’re clearly not,” Midorima said. “Did you talk to Eri and Yuri? I ran into them on my way upstairs.”

“Yeah, I talked to them alright. Kuroko and Kagami are dead, did you know?” Kise said.

“Did they tell you that?” Midorima asked, feeling the blood drain out of his face. 

“I asked them, actually. And they confirmed it. They knew it all along, and they _didn’t fucking tell us,”_ Kise spat out. “They probably killed them themselves.”

“Kise. What did you say, exactly?” Midorima said, alarmed. “And what did they say?”

Kise abruptly stopped laughing at looked at him, no trace of a smile on his face. “I asked them if Kuroko and Kagami were helping fish as fish food. Yuri called me a smart boy, and Eri told me to be careful,” he recited without feeling.

“How did you know they were dead?” Midorima asked, trying to make sense of the situation.

“Found it on the other side of the school,” Kise answered.

“And you didn’t tell any of us? And then you told Eri and Yuri that you knew they were dead? Kise, they threatened you,” Midorima said, wondering if Kise really didn’t realize that.

“I know, Midorimacchi. I understood the threat,” Kise said.

“And you’re just going to _laugh_ about it?” Midorima asked, his voice rising. “Are you _insane_?”

Kise didn’t respond, and didn’t look like he realized how much danger he had put himself in. Midorima strode towards him and threw his hands in the air. “Are you crazy? They’re going to come after you,” he said, trying to keep his anger under control. The idea of Kise being killed terrified him, and the terror was turning into anger at the fact that Kise had done something so stupid.

“Midorimacchi,” Kise said. “Why do you care?”

“Kise, what the _fuck_?” Midorima said in disbelief. The flatness in Kise’s voice told him that the question had been sincere, and he didn’t know what to do. “I care because you’re important to me.” Kise’s startled look at that made his heart ache inexplicably. “Even though I’m loath to admit it,” he added, to try to inject some lightheartedness into the situation. But that turned out to be the wrong thing to say, because Kise started to laugh again. It was not the kind of laugh Midorima wanted to hear from him, and he stood there staring at Kise, at a loss for what to do. His concern grew when he saw that tears were escaping from Kise’s eyes even as he laughed. Instinctively, Midorima moved and pulled Kise’s tense body into an embrace, leaving him enough space to pull away if he wanted to.

To his surprise and relief, Kise didn’t pull away. Instead, he clenched Midorima’s shirt as his hysterical laughter fully gave away to sobs. It sounded like he was letting out all the pain he had been carrying inside him since the beginning of everything. Midorima held him, and started rubbing soothing circles against his back. He hoped Himuro or Murasakibara wouldn’t come in and see Kise in this state. That would just prompt Kise to bottle things up even more.

After what seemed like a long time, Kise’s sobs subsided, and he took a few shaky breaths without moving away.

“That was embarrassing,” Kise said.

“It’s just me,” Midorima said. “Are you feeling better now? Than before?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kise said. “Don’t know what came over me. Sorry you had to see that.” He finally pulled away from Midorima, and rubbed a little at his eyes before looking up at him. His eyes were red from the crying, and Midorima marvelled at how he managed to look beautiful even after having cried his heart out.

“What’s the plan?” Midorima asked. He wanted to discuss Kise’s mental state some more, but now was probably not the best time.

“Since you’re right about them probably coming after me, we should move safehouses,” Kise said.

“We’ll have to tell Murasakibara and Himuro about everything, then,” Midorima pointed out.

Kise nodded. “Yes. We will. It’s a fairly long story, so let’s get going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: zen, ne, erg, za, blare, brass, quays, quota, dew, wit, aid, simple, foxes, loath, Jua, conte, un, joke, vee, os


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to our_flame_never_goes_out :D

Kenma had finally been able to hack into the security cameras in the section of the lab that was closed off to him and Kuroo. It had taken a while, but he was nothing if not patient, and his patience had paid off. He glanced around to make sure he was alone in the room before plugging in an external hard drive to the computer and copying the footage on it. He would have to wait until after he was in his room to view it because he didn’t want to risk doing it when anyone could walk in on him. Thankfully, Ava, the team lead, liked him and had arranged to get him a computer for personal use when he had mentioned couldn’t continue to eke out a living here if the only thing he could do in his off hours was count spots on the walls in his room. That computer would come in handy later today. As soon as the footage was done copying, he unplugged the hard drive and stuffed it in the pocket of his hoodie. It was time to go gather information.

He took the longer route to his room just so he’d be able to walk past Kuroo’s room and see if he was there. They couldn’t pretend to know each other as well as they did, but there was no harm in being polite to each other if they ran into each other. Kenma’s wish was answered, and he ran into Kuroo on his way. Kuroo smiled at him.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Kenma replied. “How are the experiments going?”

“Pretty good. We’re just trying out different culture medias and a bunch of different incubation temperatures and carbon dioxide levels to optimize the culture conditions for our cell lines,” Kuroo said. 

Kenma nodded as if he understood whatever Kuroo had just spouted. “That’s nice.” 

“Oh yeah. I ran into someone I knew from before,” Kuroo said cheerfully. “This guy called Oikawa. He used to go to a rival high school.”

Kenma frowned. They hadn’t heard anything from Iwaizumi or Oikawa since this entire charade had begun. He wondered what was going on.

“He said he was going to visit some other mutual friends of ours because he had recently learned their whereabouts,” Kuroo continued.

“That’s nice,” Kenma said. “I’m just going to go to my room and try to entertain myself,” he added. Trying to convey so much without giving anything away to eavesdroppers was always a challenge. He trusted Kuroo to get the gist of what he was trying to say, and trusted himself to do the same with what Kuroo was saying to him.

“Well, have fun,” Kuroo said. “Have a good night.”

“You too,” Kenma replied.

Once in his room, he plugged the hard drive into his computer and started going through footage, beginning with the most recent recordings.

* * *

 

After realizing that it would be better for everyone to move to the second safehouse to get away from Eri and Yuri, they had all come to a decision to spend a couple of days moving some supplies before leaving. Midorima and Kise had moved the most important supplies, and the plan was to take Murasakibara, Himuro, and Mai to the safehouse today. Then Midorima and Kise would return for the rest of the supplies. Kise was loading his gun when he felt the phone buzz in his pocket. It was a text from Kuroo, saying that Oikawa was coming by the school because he had some important information for them. 

“Midorimacchi,” Kise said. “Oikawa is coming over with some important information. One of us has to stay behind for him.”

“Okay,” Midorima said. “You stay, I’ll escort them to the safehouse.”

Midorima had chosen the logical solution, as Kise would expect him to do. Unfortunately, Kise disagreed with it. “I was thinking it would be better for me to go,” he began.

“Why?” Midorima asked with a frown. “You get along with him much better than I do, and I know the way to the safehouse just as well as you.”

Kise tapped his fingers on his thigh, trying to think of a way to convince Midorima to stay. “I think,” he said slowly, “I should go because I’m better at combat than you are, Midorimacchi. I’ll be a better shot at keeping everyone safe.”

“You don’t trust me with keeping the others safe?” Midorima asked.

“No. No, that’s not it,” Kise said.

“What is it, then?” Midorima asked.

Kise took a deep breath. “I don’t want to lose you, Midorimacchi. I’ve already lost enough.” He didn’t look at Midorima as he said it, and kept looking away in the following silence, not ready for whatever face Midorima was making.

In response, Midorima took a couple of steps forward and tilted Kise’s chin up. “Be careful, okay?” he said quietly.

“I always am,” Kise replied, lying through his teeth, fake smile on his face.

Midorima surveyed his face sadly, and hugged him. “I’m being serious. Be careful,” he repeated after pulling away. “Don’t do anything risky. I don’t want to lose you either.”

“I won’t, Midorimacchi,” Kise replied, no longer smiling. “You be careful too.”

Midorima nodded, and Kise turned around to head downstairs, where the others were waiting. He had a feeling that something big was about to happen.

* * *

 

Kenma clicked on the most recent recording, and waited for it to open. The screen showed a large room with what looked like large cells lining the walls. The quality was not very good, and it was hard to make out details, but he thought he could see people in the cells. Some of them looked like they were clawing and banging at the walls, while others lay in the cells, unmoving. Kenma stared slack-jawed at the recording as it played, a growing sense of horror dawning on him. This must be the lab where they kept the subjects of their experiments.

Going through the recordings for a couple of days, he found out that there were set schedules for feeding and what looked like observation by the scientists. He didn’t know how useful knowing this would be, but he thought it was better safe than sorry. As he forwarded through the recording for two days ago, he saw something that he hadn’t seen in the other videos. A person was being dragged, unconscious, into the lab and towards one of the cells, which was empty. Kenma stared at the person with a frown and froze. The person looked very familiar. He paused the video and tried to make out all the details he could.

A jolt of terror went through him when he realized the unconscious man being tossed into the cell was Iwaizumi. This meant he had been captured at some point and had most likely been infected by the virus. He had to tell Kuroo what he had found. He quickly locked his computer and went to look for Kuroo, who he hoped would still be in his room. He would only have a few minutes to talk to him about this because of the curfew.

He knocked at Kuroo’s door and waited, tapping his foot nervously on the floor. Kuroo opened the door and let him inside. “What’s wrong?” he asked, immediately concerned.

“The footage was from the lab where they keep the people they infect,” Kenma whispered urgently. “Iwaizumi-san is in there too.”

“Shit,” Kuroo said. “Do you know if he’s turned yet?”

“He was still unconscious in the footage from today,” Kenma answered, not sure if he was answering the question. “Kuro, this is _not_ the time for your hero complex to jump in,” he added, realizing why Kuroo was asking.

“Libel,” Kuroo said. “I don’t have a hero complex.”

Kenma pursed his lips, unimpressed. “Bullshit,” he said. 

“If the vaccine can save him, I have to do it, Kenma,” Kuroo said. “Help me try.”

Kenma closed his eyes, and let out a deep breath. When Kuroo got like this, it was impossible to change his mind. The best he could do was to keep him safe. “There’s a window during lunch when there aren’t any scientists in the lab. That’s your best bet. Give him the vaccine and come straight out. I’ll disable the camera during that time tomorrow.”

Kuroo nodded. “I knew I could count on you, Kenma,” he said with a wide smile.

Kenma didn’t feel like smiling. He jabbed his finger in Kuroo’s chest. “You go straight in and out, you hear me? No trying to save everyone, and don’t you _dare_ get killed,” he said fiercely.

Kuroo nodded again. “I’m not going to take any unnecessary risks. You know that,” he said gently.

“Good,” Kenma said. “Now give me some spoons so I can eat my yogurt.” 

* * *

Midorima didn’t like being left behind while Kise went with the others and put himself in danger, but he also wanted Kise out of the school as soon as possible so he’d be safer from Eri and Yuri. Midorima had been expecting the worst from them after Kise’s disastrous exchange with them last time, but so far, nothing had happened. He wasn’t about to let his guard down, though. They were going to make a move soon. He had lost count of how many times he had wished that he had been able to stop Kise from making the mistake of telling them he knew what they were up to.

He waited for Oikawa to show up, wondering what kind of important information he had uncovered. He knew Oikawa didn’t like him, and the feeling was mutual, but he could recognize that Oikawa was smart and a useful member of the team.

While he waited, he read a book he had found about herbal plants and trees. He was learning more about the qat shrub and its narcotic properties when Oikawa arrived. He looked more dishevelled than Midorima had expected, which struck him as odd. Putting that thought out of his head, Midorima braced himself for unpleasantness.

Oikawa frowned at him. “It’s you,” he said, glancing around. “Where’s Ryou-chan?”

“Out,” Midorima replied. “You have something important to share with us?”

Oikawa nodded absently, clearly thinking about something. He was silent for a few minutes, and then he looked up at Midorima. “Yeah, there’s something Iwa-chan and I discovered that we think you all should know about. It’s more something I need to show you than tell you, though,” he said.

“Where is it?” Midorima asked, crossing his arms.

“In a house,” Oikawa answered. “It’s a little ways away from here. I can take you to it. I really don’t think we should wait any longer. It’s important.”

“What about Kise and the others?” Midorima asked.

“You can show it to them once you know where it is,” Oikawa said. “I don’t have a lot of time. Need to get back to what I was doing before or they’ll get suspicious. Do you have a weapon or tool on you that you can take?”

Midorima nodded.

“Okay, then. Let’s go,” Oikawa said.

Midorima stared at Oikawa’s back and eventually followed, a strange feeling in his gut. Oikawa remained silent as he led Midorima to wherever the house he was talking about was. Midorima stayed just a step behind him, and Oikawa seemed content with the arrangement. Midorima kept his eyes peeled and noted the surroundings as Oikawa led him to a part of the town he had never been to before. It was definitely the seedier part of the town, and he had heard stories about the place back when things were normal. They walked past a van with flat tires, broken windows, and ‘ta’ sprayed on it, which Midorima thought he could use as a landmark for when he brought Kise here later.

Midorima didn’t know how long they had been walking when they reached a church with the word heretic graffitied on its wall and Oikawa headed straight inside. “We’ll rest here for a bit before moving on,” he informed Midorima in a tone that suggested that the conversation was over. Midorima nodded and sat down on one of the benches. The inside of the church looked unharmed. The only indication that it hadn’t been used for a while was the dust collected on the surfaces.

Oikawa sat on a bench some distance away from Midorima and tipped his head back, eyes closed. Even though the church was probably safe, considering the lack of destruction inside it, Midorima didn’t want to risk closing his eyes and letting his guard down. He recited different sets of alphabets under his breath as he waited for Oikawa to open his eyes and continue on the journey. 

* * *

 

“Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said you’d stocked this place up well,” Himuro commented after arriving at the new safehouse. “And it’s a real house too, with real beds we can use.”

“It’s not a very big house, and there’s already people here,” Kise said. “I’ve got six people upstairs. One of them is still pretty weak.”

“Six people? Are we even going to fit then?” Himuro asked.

“We’ll figure something out. There’s three bedrooms upstairs that are occupied, two people in each. There’s another bedroom in the basement, and there’s couches in the basement and in the living room. We should be able to make do,” Kise said. “I’ll introduce you to the others,” he added. He had already told them that he would be bringing more people to the house, so they would be expecting them. But if he had taught them anything, it was to always be on guard, and he wasn’t about to risk having Himuro or Murasakibara shot just because the people here thought they were dangerous. Murasakibara especially, with his intimidating height.

“You didn’t mention that one of the new people was going to be toddler,” Kor commented, after Kise had introduced Himuro and Murasakibara to the four people who were currently present in the house.

“It wasn’t relevant,” Kise said dismissively. “How long have the others been gone?”

“They’re supposed to be back soon,” Kor answered, looking irritated at Kise’s dismissiveness. “En and Yi said they’d try to keep today’s run within a few kilometers. They’ve been gone since early in the morning.”

Kise nodded. He wanted to head back to the school to get Midorima, but he knew they had left escorting Himuro and Murasakibara to later than they should have, and he wasn’t going to be able to make it back before dark. His best bet was to stay put and go back in the morning. “Okay. I’m going to be staying here tonight too. Do we have enough space for everybody?” he asked.

Kor blinked at him, his irritation gone. “You’re staying here?” he asked. “I thought you considered yourself too perfect and sexy to stay with us peasants.”

Kise raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve got issues, man,” Murasakibara said lazily. Kor flushed.

“Yeah, well. We’ll have nine adults and a child in the house. We have four beds and a couple of couches. We should be able to manage,” Kor said quickly. “Isn’t that other dude coming?”

“He’ll be here tomorrow,” Kise said, ignoring Kor’s very random outburst. He hoped Midorima wouldn’t get into trouble until tomorrow.

* * *

 

“How much farther is it?” Midorima asked Oikawa, after they had been walking for another couple of hours and Oikawa showed no signs of stopping. Midorima wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember the location if he had to bring the others here on his own.

“Not much,” Oikawa replied. He didn’t seem to be inclined to giving Midorima any more details. Thankfully, it did turn out that they were near whatever place Oikawa wanted to bring him to, because he slowed down and headed towards a house. It looked like a generic upper middle-class house. Midorima wondered what important thing was hidden inside.

Oikawa walked right into the house, and Midorima followed. The inside didn’t look any more remarkable than the outside had. “What’s in here that’s so important?” Midorima asked Oikawa as they walked up the stairs. Oikawa stopped climbing and looked back over his shoulder.

“My, oh my, aren’t you curious?” he said with a cold smile. “Don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough. It’s some papers and some information on a computer about that hag and how there’s someone who’s basically just turned into a dog that wags its tail on her orders.”

Midorima chalked up Oikawa’s coldness to his hatred towards him, but still felt a shiver down his spine. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve Oikawa’s loathing. He also wondered who Oikawa was referring to, since he didn’t think Kise had been able to talk to Oikawa and Iwaizumi about Eri and Yuri’s betrayal. But Maybe Oikawa had discovered it on his own. The comment about the dog made no sense to Midorima whatsoever.

Oikawa led him to a bedroom and sure enough, there was a laptop sitting on the desk. Oikawa turned it on and opened a file, then moved aside so Midorima could read it. Midorima looked at the screen, and tried to decipher what looked like a string of random words when he heard Oikawa move behind him and say something that sounded like, “un, deux, trois.”

At ‘trois,’ something hard struck his head, and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: jawed, van, hag, ava, wags, en, heretic, spoons, froze, medias, qat, deux, sexy, yi, eke, libel, tool, ta.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's almost the end of the story, I think. Thank you to everyone who's read it.  
> And as always, a huge thank you to our_flame_never_goes_out for being my lovely beta!

Midorima slowly opened his eyes, the back of his head aching. He tried to bring his hand up to his head to assess the damage, but found that his hands were bound behind him on the chair. His ankles were also bound tightly, and another rope wound around his midsection. Whoever had imprisoned him wasn’t taking any chances.

He took stock of his surroundings. If he had to take a guess, he would say he was underground, and no longer in the house Oikawa had led him to. How he got there and where Oikawa was right now, he had no idea. The room was bare, and there wasn’t anything he could see that would help him get out of his predicament. And even if there was, his growing headache and rising panic weren’t helping him see it. He tried to control his breathing to calm himself down. Takao had called it ‘calming the qis,’ and it often worked pretty well for him.

Midorima closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, trying to will his headache into dissipating. He heard some footsteps and opened his eyes. Oikawa stood staring at him.

“Why are you doing this?” Midorima asked.

“I didn’t want it to be like this, really,” Oikawa replied, much to Midorima’s surprise. He had fully expected Oikawa to ignore him, and maybe even knock him out again. “It would have been better if Kise had been the one who stayed behind to talk to me. So much less work, and fewer people involved. Of course, I’d rather not have him be hurt either.”

“Then why are you doing…whatever you’re doing? I’m assuming I’m bait to lure Kise here? And then what, you’ll kill him? I thought you were his friend. You can be an asshole, but you’re pretty open about it, and I wouldn’t have thought to expect mala fides from you,” Midorima said.

Oikawa blinked, and Midorima had almost given up expecting an answer when he spoke. “I am his friend,” Oikawa said. “But if the choice is between Iwa-chan and someone else, it really isn’t a choice at all. No matter who the someone else is.” 

“Would Iwaizumi-san thank you for saving his life by killing someone else?” Midorima said, taking a stab in the dark. So Iwaizumi had somehow gotten into trouble, and Oikawa was willing to murder people to save him.

“I’d rather he hate me and be alive than lose him forever,” Oikawa whispered. “We’ve been friends since we came out of our mothers’ wombs. I will not lose him.”

“How are you going to get Kise here?” Midorima asked. He was trying to stall for time, even though he had no escape plan yet, and wasn’t very optimistic about coming up with one.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Oikawa said.

 

Kenma watched the cameras, anxious both for himself and Kuroo. It wouldn’t end well if he was found accessing the cameras in real time. It was lunch, and the lab was devoid of scientists. If everything went according to plan, Kuroo would be able to walk in uninterrupted and deliver the antidote to Iwaizumi. Hopefully it wasn’t too late to save him.

His heart sped up in fear as Kuroo briefly showed up in the camera’s field of view and headed towards one of the cells. To force himself to calm down, Kenma clicked on one of the cameras he hadn’t accessed before, pulling up the live feed. His heart stuttered to a stop when he saw Midorima bound to a chair in the middle of something that looked like an interrogation room right out of a television show. From what he could tell in the grainy footage, he didn’t look hurt, and was awake, since he was looking around. Kenma’s eyes widened in shock when he saw Oikawa step into the camera’s field of view.

He quickly checked up on Kuroo, who was just leaving the lab, and then pulled out his emergency phone. He was typing when a hand grabbed him roughly by the hair and jerked his head back and he found himself staring at Yuri. Eri stood next to her. He hadn’t even heard them come in. He hastily pressed send on the unfinished message, and threw the phone at the wall, where it broke on impact.

Eri shook her head. “You always were too clever for your own good, eh? Couldn’t do your job and be a dumb little rat,” she said, and Yuri yanked on his hair hard enough to make his eyes water. He hoped they hadn’t seen Kuroo in the camera. “Incapacitate him, Yuri,” she ordered, her eyes hard. Yuri drove a fist into his stomach, and when he doubled over in pain, kneed him in the face. Pain blossomed in his nose, and he saw large, round drops of bright red blood drip onto the floor.

“I hate ops that get unnecessarily messy,” he heard Yuri mutter before he passed out. 

 

Kise had left the new safehouse for the school at dawn, only to find that there was no sign of Midorima at the school. He searched the school from top to bottom, but found nothing to tell him where Midorima could have gone. He wondered if he was still with Oikawa, but couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Maybe he should have been the one who had stayed behind. Maybe that would’ve kept Midorima safe.

Worry mounting, he tried to think of the best thing to do. He didn’t know what Oikawa had wanted to tell them, or where he could have taken Midorima, so it would be useless to just go out and try looking for Midorima without any leads. He debated trying to contact Kenma and Kuroo, and then wondered if it would be better to go to the lab himself. He pulled out his phone and turned it on, concluding that it was probably best to ask Kuroo or Kenma before heading right into what could be a dangerous situation.

As soon as the phone turned on, he saw that he had a message from Kenma. He opened it, and his heart sank.

_Midorima captured. At lab. Oik—_

The message was incomplete, and Kise hoped Kenma was still alive. Kise wondered what Kenma had been trying to say about Oikawa, and got the feeling that it hadn’t been something good. Since Oikawa was presumably the last person who had been with Midorima before he was captured, he was either dead or was had something to do with Midorima’s capture. If it was the latter, Kise was going to kill Oikawa himself.

He loaded his gun and tucked an extra one away. It was time to pay the lab a visit.

 

Kuroo quickly walked out of the lab and made his way back to where he was supposed to be. He hadn’t run into anyone who would suspect him for doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, thankfully. It would be a shame if he got caught now. He had managed to deliver the vaccine to Iwaizumi, who had still been unconscious. He hoped he had injected it right, and enough of it had ended up where it needed to be. He would have tried to help the others, but he didn’t have enough time or enough vaccine to do so. Some of them were way too far into their transformation to be helped with this vaccine anyway. Another thing he had noticed was that the far wall of the lab had a number of tanks. In each tank, an unconscious person floated in a membranous compartment that resembled an amniotic sac. Kuroo didn’t want to think about what could be going on there.

On his way back to his own lab, he passed by the room Kenma worked in and peeked inside. There was nobody there, which could be expected, since it was lunch hour. People didn’t tend to stick around during lunch. What was strange was that Kenma wasn’t there either, and the computer he worked at was on, with live camera feeds displayed on the monitor. Kuroo felt a chill down his spine. Something was wrong.

He quickly went into the room, and looked at the camera feed. One of them showed the lab he had just been in, and another showed a random room, with a person bound to a chair. Kuroo peered at the screen, and realized with a jolt that the person was Midorima. He quickly closed the window to hide the camera feed, and then looked around. Something on the floor caught his eye, and he picked it up. It looked like a piece of a phone. Quickly scanning the floor, he found the rest of the phone. The screen was completely cracked, and the battery had popped out. It was the phone he and Kenma used to contact Kise. Something had happened to Kenma.

His hope that Kenma had escaped were dashed when he looked spotted the blood on the floor. It wasn’t a lot of blood; just a few drops, probably from a bleeding nose, but it meant there had been a scuffle, and things had gotten physical. He had to find Kenma, and also help Midorima. He would have appreciated some backup, but the phone had been destroyed. He didn’t remember Kise’s number, so stealing someone else’s phone wouldn’t be any use either. He was on his own.

He had no idea where Kenma could be, but did have a vague idea of where Midorima was. Swallowing his concern about Kenma, he headed towards the place where he thought Midorima was being held captive. He wondered who had brought him there.

He walked as fast as he could without raising suspicion. He was thankful that he was good at pretending to look like he knew what he was doing. It didn’t take him very long to find the room Midorima was imprisoned in. He cast a quick glance around the hall and walked in. Midorima turned his head to look at him. Whoever had bound him here had been extra cruel and placed the chair so Midorima’s back faced the door.

Kuroo quickly walked up to him. He didn’t have anything to cut the ropes with except a couple of scalpels, which were the only things he could safely sneak into his labcoat pocket.

“Didn’t expect to see you here like this. I’m going to free your hands first,” he commented, getting to work on the ropes that bound Midorima’s hands. He saw a patch of green hair matted with blood at the back of Midorima’s head and winced. “How did you get here?” he asked.

“I’m afraid he can thank me for that,” Oikawa’s voice answered. Kuroo turned around to see Oikawa pointing a gun at his chest. “Step away from him, Kuroo,” he ordered.

“You won’t kill me,” Kuroo said, sounding more confident than he felt.

“Don’t count on it,” Oikawa said. “Step. Away.”

 _‘If you’re dead, you’re useless to everyone.’_ He heard Kenma’s voice snap at him in his head, and took a step away from Midorima. Oikawa could decide to shoot him anyway, but actively antagonizing him was probably not a good idea. “There. I stepped away. You can lower the gun now,” he said. Maybe he talk Oikawa into lowering his defenses and then tackle him. If he could eliminate the gun from the equation, he would have a slight edge over Oikawa, since he had a couple of inches and a few pounds on him. But Oikawa wasn’t stupid.

“I’m sorry, Kuroo. I can’t take any chances. Iwa-chan’s life is on the line,” Oikawa said, jaw set. He pointed the gun at Kuroo’s leg.

Kuroo’s eyes widened in realization and he opened his mouth. “Wait, Oikawa, Iwaizumi—” he broke off as pain tore through his leg. He sank to the floor, trying to breathe evenly as blood flowed freely from the wound.

“You should bind that wound before you bleed out,” Oikawa said, before walking out of the room.

Gritting his teeth, Kuroo pulled off his labcoat and wound an arm around his leg and tied it as tightly as he could. It was by no means perfect, and he had a lot of things to worry about, but at least this would stanch the bleeding somewhat. He staggered towards Midorima and turned the chair so it faced the door. He then sat behind Midorima and went back to sawing at the ropes with the scalpel.

“Are you okay?” Midorima asked.

“I just got shot in the leg. I am not okay,” Kuroo said, working as quickly as his shaky hands would allow. He would need real first aid soon. “We’re all going to need therapy if we make it out of this alive, or we’ll run into each other at an AA meeting in five years.”

He finally managed to free Midorima’s hands. Midorima rubbed his wrists, and held his hand out for the scalpel. Kuroo handed it to him, and they both started on the rest of Midorima’s bindings. Kuroo could feel the blood starting to soak through the makeshift bandage. It would be sad if he succumbed to a wound caused by someone he had considered a friend.

 

Kise knocked five times on the safehouse door, and Murasakibara opened the door to let him in. “Where’s Midochin?” Murasakibara asked.

“He’s been captured and is being held at the lab,” Kise replied. “I think it’s time to go on the offensive. We have people and we have weapons. We should be able to go get him back.”

“I’ll gather everyone for a meeting, then,” Murasakibara said. Kise nodded.

A few minutes later, everyone had congregated in the living room and was looking at him expectantly. Change the setting to a church, and he’d feel like a vicar addressing his parish. 

“Okay, so I think it’s time for us to mount an offensive on the lab,” Kise began.

“Why now?” Kor asked, arms folded across his chest.

“Because things have come to a head,” Kise said.

“That doesn’t answer my question at all,” Kor said.

“Because we know what the lab is doing, and we need to put a stop to it,” Kise said. “If we sit back and let them continue, it’s going to be too late.”

“There’s only nine of us,” Ned pointed out. “Ai is too weak to fight, still, and someone else will also have to stay behind to take care of her and Mai. So realistically, there’s a max of seven people who can mount this attack of yours. Seven people isn’t an army.”

“We don’t need an army,” Flore said. She was the person Kise had had to threaten Kor to look after when he and Midorima had found her, and she had turned out to be the best at fighting out of all of them. She was an ex special forces member and knew of Eri and Yuri. “Hell, we don’t even need seven people. Seven would be great if you _all_ knew how to fight, but that’s not how it is. Anyone who can’t really hold their own in a fight is just going to be a liability.”

“So who goes, then?” Zed asked.

“Kise, Mo, Bo, and myself,” Flore said, pointing at everyone in turn. She looked to Kise for his opinion.

Kise nodded. “That’s a good team,” he said.

“You don’t want to take Kart?” Himuro asked.

“En couldn’t be stealthy if his life depended on it, as I learned the last time we went on a supply run,” Flore replied. “His brand of strength is ‘good-at-PE strength,’ and not ‘good-in-a-life-or-death-situation strength.’”

“We have enough ammo and weapons for the party,” Kise said. “We want to avoid killing people, but better them than us.”

Flore nodded. Kor looked a little green as they talked so callously about killing people, but didn’t say anything. “Choose your weapons. The ones with the xis engraved on them are the quietest.”

“We’re leaving as soon as we choose our weapons,” Kise said.

“Good luck,” Kart said, not at all displeased at being left behind.

“My tum hurts,” Mai announced, sniffling in Himuro’s arms. She had been quiet during the entire meeting, probably because of the sombre mood.

“Let’s get you something for it,” Himuro soothed her. “Good luck. Stay safe, you all,” he said, and took Mai upstairs. 

Flore was examining a gun when Kise joined her. Satisfied with the gun, she loaded it. “You know,” she said quietly, just for Kise to hear. “If we get out of this alive, I’m joining a convent in a little vill somewhere and becoming a nun.”

“Let’s make sure you get to do that,” Kise replied. “Alright, everyone. This is it,” he said, and they marched out, perhaps never to return. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Words used: qis, fides, is, wombs, eh, job, ops, sac, green, set, aa, vicar, ned, ai, flore, zed, mo, bo, kart, pe, xis, tum, vill, nun.


End file.
